We have a ton of old photos and documents about the contingent in our stores. I’m wanting to start putting together a history but despite having a history am drawing a blank on the format/where to start. Does anyone have an electronic copy of their unit history they wouldn’t mind sharing with me for inspiration?
We’ve got a lot of our early history mounted in large albums. Cadets do enjoy looking through them and trying to spot past cadets, as well as finding out about our history and links to tte RAF when we had a base near us. Nothing electronic I’m afraid.
However, my daughter has just finished her photography A level and used Google Slides to put together her final portfolio. I’ve asked her and it could be used to put together a history book by scanning and uploading to whatever you set up. If you want any more info, let me know
Thanks for that, very helpful. Will look into the Google slides
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It depends what you want to do as a history.
If it’s a photo album do that or a more complete written work.
I would suggest try and speak to old staff, cadets and civ comm. Look through local paper archives in local libraries. One of my counterparts did this and as a history it starts at the beginning and I’ve just added notable events and odd stories … god and not so good.
We include this when we do ATC history, so that cadets get a sense of why we are here.
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I had the same issue on my squadron. Boxes and boxes of photos, albums, and other paraphernalia.
I started by sorting through everything into group photos & photos of identifiable events and then a separate pile of individuals and unidentifiable stuff.
I then scanned all the group photos and identifiable events and put them up on the squadrons website on a dedicated history page.
Then as Teflon suggests, I went to the local library and browsed through their local newspaper archives, taking print outs of any interesting articles. These then got scanned in and added to the history page too.
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a friend of mine found a heap of photos in a cupboard once and started a “I used to be a town name Cadet…” Facebook group.
with the help of former cadets and staff the people in the photos were tagged, and then their friends joined and tagged others to build an alumni community…
I am not sure if it helps as an idea?
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One of the things with a photo album is if you have staff on the squadron who were cadets on the squadron, and then give a prize if cadets can spot them.
This can be quite good fun, especially if the staff are really young.
I have not long ago updated our Squadron History which has gone from being 3 pages of writing to 11 with some old and new photos. Including when the Squadron was first started as ADCC.
It was a fairly enjoyable job and I’m now only missing some history from around the time I was a cadet.
Willing to share it, if you’d like to see the format I’ve used.
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Can you upload it here?
Thanks. That would be great thanks. Will DM an email address.
Not a Unit history - however, I sent a letter into the local paper’s “the way they were” section, asking for old stories and information about the Squadron in the 40s. Amazing response, I met people who were cadets in the 1940s, loads of stories, people who still had their old uniform etc, really interesting!
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