"I would recommend CommunitySites to any museum or community organisation..."

We approached CommunitySites to set up a contributory website for a community engagement project called Our Town recording Great Yarmouth’s history for the last 60 years.  CommunitySites worked with us to design a user friendly site which allowed us to make the museum’s collections accessible to a global audience.  

 

They provided 5 days of training for museum staff and a team of volunteers during which we were able to upload a large amount of information, archive photographs and oral history clips onto the site. The technical experience of our volunteers varied but the training provided was accessible to everyone. This process enabled us to launch the site within 5 months and since it went live it has continued to grow as members of the public add their own comments and memories to the pages we have made.

 

Our volunteer team meet regularly and are constantly updating the pages and publishing new comments, making this a sustainable resource for the museum. We are nearing the first anniversary and in that time we have had over 26,000 visits which we are very pleased with.

 

The public response to www.ourgreatyarmouth.org.uk has been very positive and I would recommend CommunitySites to any museum or community organisation who were running a similar community history project.

 

Some of the comments from visitors to the site can be seen below:

 

“It’s good to see people sharing and contributing pictures on all aspects of the town’s history.”

 

“What a fabulous site! This site is going to get bigger and better as people contribute to it.”