As part of the annual ESRC Festival of Social Science, Dr Kathy Hamilton, Dr Beverly Wagner and Dr Juliette Wilson (Marketing) and Dr Sarah Edwards and Professor Faye Hammill (Hass) organised a week-long poster exhibition and one day workshop in the Scotland Street School Museum. The purpose of this festival, which this year took place between October 31 and November 5, is to encourage academic engagement with the wider public.
The exhibition was based on competition entries around the theme of nostalgia and school days. The Nostalgia group asked the question "are school days really the best days of our lives?" and invited children and adults to submit photo-essays on their school memories. The posters comprised short stories and poems and some had personal photographs spanning three or four generations.
Children and their families were invited to join a workshop inspired by the photo-essay display. People were urged to think about and talk about their school-day memories and, through the workshop, discuss how these childhood stories shape our lives. In this way people gained insight into a past time and also other people's lives. It inspired people to have conversations about things they perhaps had not talked about before and also to reflect on how their memories compared to those of others. A photographer was invited who encouraged the participants to dress up in clothes from the past and re-enact some of the stories described in the posters. The workshop was informal and fun and retro sweets and drinks were offered to get everyone into a nostalgic mood.
Various Glasgow communities got involved with this project, including Scotland Street School Museum, The Inspiration Festival 2011, Glasgow's Festival of the Arts, local museums, galleries and schools, who used the project as a theme for school homework.