The Weekend Millionaires

Tales from the Thames: An Oral History of the Thames Lightermen.

“Tales from the Thames” is an oral history project focussing on the Thames Lightermen and Watermen, the people who have operated the boats on the Thames with a history going back hundreds of years.

Working with arts and education charity digital-works children from St George The Martyr and Westminster Cathedral primary schools in London explored  this history. They went on visits to the Museum of London, Docklands, and on a specially organised boat trip where they learnt some of the skills of the lightermen from former lightermen and went through mock apprenticeships. The children wrote about the history and the lightermen they met in biography, prose and poetry. Then, with oral history training, the children themselves conducted and record on film, interviews with lightermen to discover and then share their history through a documentary film and writing.

More can be seen about this project here.