Digital Drama has been awarded a grant by the National Lottery Heritage Fund for an exciting heritage project, Little Manhattan, in the London Borough of Croydon. Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project captures and preserves stories from the local community focusing on the area’s urban landscape and in particular, the skyline that rose above the town in the post-war period between the 1950s and 70s. This regenerative building boom transformed Croydon from being a town made up of traditional brick buildings to an architecturally modern urban space rivalling the design, skyline and environment of major cities, earning it the nickname ‘Little Manhattan’.
Digital Drama, supported by project partners Museum of Croydon, Library and Archive Services, has been running a year-long series of community activities and events which started in April 2023 to record and preserve local residents’ memories of the redevelopment of Croydon. Stories of some of the town’s distinctive Brutalist high-rises and flyover feature in the creation of a free audio trail, celebrating the local urban environment, as well as a new short film using little-seen archive footage of the area and an exhibition at the Museum of Croydon running from December 6th 2023 to February 23rd 2024, featuring an artistic representation of Croydon’s skyline made by families and young people in a series of community craft workshops over the year.
Digital Drama has run skills workshops to train young people from local communities refugee communities and enable them to gain experience in interviewing, audio recording and editing for digital content creation. Working with heritage professionals from the Museum of Croydon, Libraries and Archives services, participants gained a deeper insight into this previously under-researched part of their urban landscape and learned valuable new communication skills to use as they develop their careers.
Croydon Libraries hosted free family craft sessions in the summer holidays to create the Little Manhattan skyline installation, and after a three-month tour to local libraries in the borough, including accompanying heritage talks and reminiscence sessions, the project is culminating in the exhibition at the Museum of Croydon.
The Little Manhattan Project is produced by Digital Drama and is made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players.
