Dear parents/carers/wider families,

To link in with our whole school Local History studies, we have a few ways you can get involved:

1. If you have any resources relevant to the school's history - old photos, documentation - please bring it in. You can either donate it to the school collection or loan us it for a short time so that we can scan and digitise it, adding it to our virtual collection. Kindly contact Mr Ousby if you think you have something that we can use.

2. If you have recollections or stories from your time or family member's time at the school, please arrange an interview with Mr Ousby. He'll find a chance to sit down with you and take copious notes or even record you (just the audio) as long as you feel comfortable with that! If you have family members or know members of the local community who'd enjoy this opportunity to share their memories, we’d love that too. If you're happy for children to sit in on these sessions, we'd be really appreciative as it will help them to realise the history around them in a fuller way and ask some questions of their own. Oral history is especially important in a small village like Laddingford.

3. If you have some free time, we really need some help scanning in our old log books so that we can make them accessible to everyone without risking further damage. This is a mammoth task but if you can spare half an hour or even more, Mr Ousby will set you up with the scanner, make you a cup of tea and give you a biscuit whilst you commit these fragile books to digital eternity! A hugely rewarding task.

By the end of this quarter, it is our aim to have a huge archive of virtual documents, maps, diagrams and photographs available on the school website, including children's work on our school's history. Any way that you can contribute will make a big difference to the quality and scope of this finished project.

Kind regards,

Mr Ousby