Anniversary celebrations for Cornish culture

The event also marked the launch of the archive’s new dissemination programme. Entitled Cornish Story, its aim is to promote a greater understanding of Cornwall’s cultural distinctiveness through community workshops, lectures, publications, multimedia projects and the Internet. Building on the resources of the archive the Cornish Story team will eventually work with local schools, businesses and cultural organisations to promote a series of pioneering educational projects that explores the ongoing story of Cornwall in the past and present.

Dr Garry Tregidga, Director of the Cornish Audio Visual Archive at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus, said ‘This event was an opportunity to reflect on developments in Cornish oral history over the past decade and to thank the many individuals and organisations who are currently associated with the work of the archive. With the forthcoming launch of our Cornish Story Programme later this year the next task is to build on these achievements by harnessing the multimedia power of oral history, music, film and photography to create new opportunities for promoting a greater understanding of Cornwall’s distinctive culture and heritage’.

Kim Cooper, Principal Librarian at the Cornwall Centre, said ‘We have been very pleased to support CAVA over the past ten years. The Cornwall Centre provides a public home to the archive and many of the recordings are available here to listen to. They give a wonderful insight into Cornish life and add an extra dimension to our collections of books, photographs and newspapers. We congratulate the CAVA team on all their hard work and achievements and wish them well in their next project’.