Brighton Swimming Club was founded in 1860 at the Jolly Fisherman’s Inn and has promoted sea swimming and sport ever since. In this event, project director Paul Farrington will discuss Floating Memories, which is archiving over 150 years of the Club’s unique history. The talk will take us behind the scenes of how the project was conceived, its successful funding application to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the use of digital multimedia and oral history to showcase the colourful memories and stories of sea bathers and sportspeople, including the Christmas Day Swim and the Pier-to-Pier race. So far the project has digitised and catalogued the Club’s archives at East Sussex Record Office, recorded 30 oral histories, put on walking tours and talks, exhibited widely, including a permanent display at the Brighton Fishing Museum, and worked with Screen Archive South East to digitise 23 reels of archive film from 1946.

 Paul Farrington is a graduate from the Royal College of Art, now working as a digital artist, graphic designer and sound artist for musicians such as Moby and Depeche Mode. He is also a member of Brighton Swimming Club, swimming in the sea everyday - whatever the weather.

 For more information see http://www.floatingmemories.co.uk/

 This Open Seminar is free to all. It is co-sponsored by:

Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research (CLHLWR)

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/clhlwr/

 and Centre for Material Digital Culture (CMDC)

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/rcmdc/

For information about the seminar, contact Margaretta Jolly m.jolly@sussex.ac.uk

By: Margaretta Jolly
Last updated: Friday, 31 August 2012