Thames Gateway Archive: Working Lives of the Thames Gateway

In March 2005 Eastside Community Heritage received a project planning grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help them develop a new and ambitious oral history project – Working Lives of the Thames Gateway.

Working Lives is a four year project preserving, recording, and documenting peoples stories about past and present industries in Barking and Dagenham, Bexley, Havering, Greenwich, Newham and Tower Hamlets. Industries like car manufacturing, munitions, shipbuilding, food processing, chemical production, electrical engineering and printing provide a starting point for this unique project.

Working Lives of the Thames Gateway has been developed in partnership with the University of East London, six London borough archives and the London Metropolitan Archives. This project is the first of its kind in the region and will result in an oral history archive, an education and training programme and a number of historical publications.