Celebrating Our Heritage
Your Miners' Centre
We asked our Facebook community:
“When you think of the Miners' Centre what's the first thing that comes to mind?”
Richard Pryce: Happy memories of working in CDMH with amazing colleagues and friends ❤
Nikki Liverton: Art ♥️
Melissa James: Dancing x
Irene Burrows: Friendship
Alison Palmer: Community
Our 2021 Heritage Project
The Caerphilly Miners Heritage Project is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to look into the heritage of Caerphilly Miners Centre, speaking to and hearing from people whose lives have been part of the Miners’ history – primarily from years it was a hospital serving the local community until the 1980s.
Concept: Changing Lives
Caerphilly Miners Centre for the Community was established to preserve the social heritage embedded in the Miners building and to breath new life into the building. One of our charity objectives is to celebrate the heritage of our building. Our vision for the Miners has been to create a 21st century resource to support the health and wellbeing of our community, equivalent to the endeavours of the Miners in the early 20th century in safeguarding their health through a hospital. So, our Board was excited at the prospect of being able to create a digital record our social heritage.
The Project
Our plan was to create a collection of short videos about Our Life with the Miners as an archive of people’s personal history, to train people to make and edit films and to recruit people willing to tell their stories. The project started in mid-December just before the winter Covid lockdown which lasted for the whole life of the project. We were also challenged by serious illness in our project lead. This led to fewer films being made and the launch of the webpage, online contact form and social media campaign taking place later than planned.
Developing Digital Skills
Although we were unable to train volunteers in filmmaking, our marketing group found other ways to engage our community, develop digital skills and maintain our profile and community engagement. As well as online Zoom events, we asked our community to tell us what comes to mind when they think of the Miners, we had an excellent response with lovely comments and we have captured and share these here. We also involved 50+ community members in making a film of our outreach activities. This process itself have helped to improve the filming and film-making skills of our community and led us to engage new volunteers with digital skills, interests in filming, and confidence in speaking to camera. The people involved as well as people in classes that were part of the video were all excited by the process and it really made a difference to the emotional wellbeing of several of our members – breaking up ‘long winter months in isolation’.
Recruiting Storytellers
On 10th March 2021 we started a Facebook campaign with a post asking our community if they were born, had given birth, or worked at the Miners. To our amazement we reached 25,531 people, received 4982 engagements and 255 comments within a few days. We created another Facebook post on 12th March asking for volunteers to create short films telling the story of My Life and the Miners. Instead, with a reach of a further 16,600 people, we received 1895 engagements and 47 comments about their fond memories of experiences at the Miners. We boosted this post for 4 days from 12th -16th March and we promoted our page for the rest of the month, which reached a further 8,313 people with 797 engagements.
Kristina Harries: I was born there in October 1981 then did my comprehensive school work experience there too with the physiotherapists.
Denise Williams: I was born there. I had my tonsillectomy there when I was about 8yrs old. Remember the balcony on the big house which remains to this day. My father took me there when my leg become swollen after a bee sting and I had injections for this. My father had shrapnel removed from his arm years after the war. I had my daughter there. Did 3 months of my conversion course there to become an RGN. The staff were lovely to work with. I accompanied patients there for treatment and went on lots of training courses there. What a great hospital sorry it's gone. Pleased we have their main building and they use it for a purpose.
Margaret Church: My youngest son was born on Christmas Day 1980 and went into the Christmas Crib, we were made a real fuss off. Photos in paper, special flowers and cards.
Facebook Comments We Received
Website Messages We Received
In addition to the Facebook comments we received 38 messages through our website in March 2021.
D.E: The Miners Hospital holds a lot of memories, having my son Thomas Born in 1992 and my daughter Holly in 1998, the staff were amazing, from the anti-natal classes - scan appointments through to the births, we also attended the A&E department several times, with broken bones being reset, all the memories were happy ones as it’s was small and friendly. Now my son lives on the new estate Beech Tree View, almost on the spot that he was born. Unfortunately no photographs to show the hospital, as before mobile phones.