‘Tale-enders: Storytelling, Technology and Sports Heritage’

Tale-enders is a collaborative project between the Cricket Board of Wales and the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan, aimed at gathering the narrative heritage of Welsh Cricket. The project coincides with the redevelopment of the Glamorgan cricket ground at Sophia Gardens. Working with six representative cricket clubs throughout Wales, a wide-range of stories, memories and reminiscences are being gathered from club members, players and spectators for deposit in the new Museum of Welsh Cricket, which is part of the development programme. The stories are being collected in a range of forms (such as digital stories) and will be accessible from terminals inside the Museum and via the internet. It is also hoped to make the stories available for download within the ground and for broadcast during intervals and play interruptions on match days on the in-ground giant screen. This project is currently ongoing and this paper takes the form of a report on the work so far in gathering oral histories and narratives from the Welsh cricketing communities. The project aims to involve the cricketing community in developing the museum’s collections and giving a sense of ownership of the museum to all the sport’s stakeholders in Wales, thus democratising its collections, as well as significantly enhancing the visitor experience through the exploitation of new technology.