Beyond the Map was a six-month local history and digital storytelling project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and led by the Ouseburn Trust in partnership with Curiosity Creative. 

Alex Magin from Curiosity Creative worked with five local community groups to explore their memories and experience of leisure and play through reminiscence sessions and guided walks. Using ipads they created short digital stories about them, illustrated with photos, maps and drawings.

The 18 digital stories were shown at our Beyond the Map celebration event at the Star & Shadow Cinema in December 2013 including:

Money for Nowt by Mark James is the story of 'penny for the guy' adventures with his own illustrations.

The Tale of the German Rhubarb by Charles Bell captures his memories of growing up on the banks of Ouseburn Valley

Dressed to Kill by Moira Cairns is about getting ready to go out on a Saturday night including going to Gibson Street Baths.

The Working Men's Hobby by Malcolm Osborne is full of memories of pigeon racing in the 1960s.

The full set of digital stories can be found here.

We were able to extend the enjoyment of Beyond the Map by working with a school group.  As part of their art studies the students from Sacred Heart Catholic School explored the Ouseburn Valley with Heritage Volunteer Liz Cowans and looked at how children played in the past. They learnt how to print old images of play onto tiles and then created a set of beautiful sculptural ceramic tiles on the theme of children’s play which are now displayed in the Ouseburn Trust office.

You can read the final report for this project here.

Thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund for funding this project.