We have now come to the end of the project ‘Rewind 7 decades of stories from Leonard Cheshire’. What have we achieved? Lets look back at what we have done over the past 2 years.

In total, we digitised 6,746 pages including the complete run of our Cheshire Smile journal, published from 1954-1999. We digitised 541 photographs, 345 minutes of film and 400 minutes of audio footage from our archive and the British Film Institute (BFI). 10 of our films have been audio described and all digitised sound and film has been made available on our website with transcriptions and subtitles.

Our programme of Heritage Workshops has exceeded targets, with 94 held over 6 sites, with an impressive 1,037 participations by workshop members and 73 creative outputs made. Our celebration events were well attended by 240 people and our initial target of 1 exhibition was exceeded by 3 further exhibitions in Kent, Surrey and South Derbyshire – and there is another at Sharpe’s Pottery Museum in March 2018!

We couldn’t have done it without the dedication of volunteers, both in person and digital who gave over 1,167 hours of their time supporting the project in workshops, exhibitions,  by transcribing material for our website and interpreting archive items for our website blogs.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank all the staff, volunteers and service users who participated in our project and helped make it such a success. Finally, thanks are due to the Heritage Lottery Fund and our other funders, who enabled us to carry out the project so successfully.

Some of our project feedback includes:

“Lovely to see so many photographs and faces over time. We need more people to be aware of the stories of people, whoever they are”.

“It [Rewind] was really important in strengthening the community in the home, the service volunteers have had their enthusiasm rejuvenated and they feel more valued”.

“Lovely space with some great archive photos – helping to share the history of disability”.

“So lovely to see Leonard’s vision and caring nature still going on!”

Please find out more about our project by watching the film below.