Stories and legends sought of Inishtrahull to ‘keep them safe for future generations’

The group wants to collect, preserve, and eventually publish and/or make available as much information on Inishtrahull and island/coastal life as they can.

Their goal is to create an archive of stories relating to Inishtrahull that will keep these stories safe for future generations and to enable more productive research on the history of the island and its surrounding area. 

In the future, they hope to both publish this information online ourselves and make it available to professional and amateur researchers interested in the island’s history. 

While we are all trying to keep ourselves active and occupied during these extremely challenging times of COVID-19, perhaps now would be the perfect opportunity to sit down and record a few of the more interesting stories you might have heard. Maybe this means:

Writing down a childhood memory.

Recording some piece of folklore.

Recording a self-interview about your own experiences of Inishtrahull.

Recording  an interview with an older grandparent, parent or friend. (In line with current HSE/NHS COVID-19 social distancing guidelines)

The group is interested in stories in any form they might take, and this includes stories about other Irish islands, from Tory to Fastnet, or about coastal communities like Malin or Galways Claddagh. Basically, if you think they might be interested, they probably are! 

If you are approaching an older person to collect a story from them, it’s very important that you make clear to them what you are doing, and what will be done with the information they give you. This is especially important if you are recording audio of someone. They would ask you to please ensure that anyone who submits material to this project is comfortable with it being published online and made available to researchers and members of the public. Please also ask them if they would like to have their name published as the source of the story. And of course, please do not record anyone without first obtaining their clear consent. 

When publishing material, it will be the policy to credit the person who collected it and to not substantially edit or alter the text of the material.

However, if you would prefer that information be published anonymously, or would prefer for the names in a story to be changed, that is absolutely fine as well, just mention this in your e-mail. If you have any other preferences about how your material is published, just specify these when you’re submitting it and they will do their best to comply. 

They would also ask that anyone interested in submitting information please give the full terms and conditions a quick read over. They will take your submission to the project as agreement to the terms and conditions. They would also appreciate it if in your e-mail you do mention that you agree to the terms and conditions.

Please send any small files to [email protected] with the title ‘Archiving Memory’  and your name. If your submission file is too large to send through e-mail please e-mail them describing your file and they will get back to you with how will be best to send it.  Please also confirm in your e-mail that you have read and understand the terms and conditions.

Files they are looking for include: Word/Google/PDF Documents

Photos

Videos

Audio Files

If you have any further questions or queries about the project feel free to send an e-mail or contact the Inishtrahull Initiative via their social media accounts.