The Living Stones Project, 1/6/2022 – 1/6/2027
Extract from the successful application to the Heritage Lottery Fund:
Project Rationale: Except at one or two locations within the UK, Observant Jewish Communities are shrinking for several reasons: an increase in intermarriage and the general reduction of belief in Abrahamic religious beliefs. The demographic of this community is heavily skewed to the post-70 age group and another member is lost almost every week. If the Heritage within the community is not secured now then it will be lost for ever.
Aims of the project:
The general aim is to preserve the heritage of a shrinking ethnic (Jewish) community.
Objectives and Activities
• to document the deceased in the Jewish cemeteries used by the community;
• to research the lives of the deceased to describe their origins, successes & failures and their contribution to the life and economy of the location and to the community in general;
• to preserve the history of the Jewish Communities in Bournemouth & Poole;
• to archive the information we collect in different formats – oral/video histories will be archived online and with Dorset History Centre;
• create a website will have a searchable database of the information and will accept submissions of further information from relatives, friends etc of the deceased;
Money will be spent on:
• building the website and populating it with text and photographs of all headstones belonging to the Orthodox, Chabad and Reform Communities, and ’stories’ written around the contribution of individuals or groups of past members to the life of the communities and the boroughs;
• transport costs of visiting cemeteries, going to courses, travelling to photograph all the headstones; researching the history of the deceased; recording video/sound interviews of living members; engaging specialists eg Dorset History Centre to run courses in research, interviewing, archiving; scanning documents held in the Synagogue’s archives;
Dissemination:
• holding exhibitions in local museums (Russell-Cotes has agreed to host) and in other locations eg London Jewish Museum, Manchester Jewish Museum, etc; printing leaflets to place in information centres around the County; publishing booklet/s to be submitted to libraries, material for use in schools;
Evaluation:
• by online or paper-based questionnaires and face to face interviews.
