Speaking about things: oral history as context

‘Speaking About Things: Oral History as Context’ draws on life history interviews conducted under the auspices of two oral history projects: the Life Story Collection at The British Library National Sound Archive [2003-4] [LSC], and the Voices in the Visual Arts [VIVA] project based at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London [2005-]. Oral histories, while focusing on the singularity of individual testimony, are here understood as creating ‘a vital document to the construction of consciousness, emphasising both the variety of experience in any social group, and also how each individual draws on a common culture: a defiance of the rigid categorisation of private and public just as of memory and reality’ (Samuel & Thompson, 1990: 2). The paper, therefore, addresses the value of life stories (sections within the overall life history) to demonstrate the ways in which interviews with designers offer a ‘thick description’ of the networks in which designers are situated as subjects. How designers talk, rather than write, about their work, and designed objects, in oral history interviews reveals their visual and embodied memories in everyday practice in which designed objects are not autonomous productions but are recollected as arising in a web of recollected images and references which all contribute to the meaning of ‘design’ and the identity of a designer.