![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/files\/2026\/08\/Debbie-Clarke-225x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIn the summer we were joined by Debbie, as our new Past Lives Future Proofed Community Engagement Officer. We’ve given her a couple of months to get to grips with the role and learn about how DHC works, and now we wanted to introduce her to readers, and explain a little more about what she has been doing since she started…<\/p>\n
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Hello, I am Debbie, I am the new Community Engagement Officer for the Past Lives, Future Proofed project. I have a background in the arts and have worked on a range of projects with community groups, museums, schools and organisations to make pottery accessible for everyone.<\/p>\n
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I joined the team in July and my first day of my new role started at Poole Quay to catch a boat to Brownsea Island with the volunteers. Each summer a day out is planned to celebrate and thank the team of volunteers. Over the course of the day, I got to meet and talk to the team, finding out their roles and the kind of archives they have found interesting. We had a tour of some of the island with some interesting facts. In particular that Silka deer can swim. They are not native and were introduced to Brownsea Island and now populate a large area of the Purbecks, heading towards Dorchester.<\/p>\n The next few weeks have been spent exploring the archives and the Past Lives, Future Proofed project. It amazes me the variety of archives we have in the collection! These include a yellow vinyl record (D-BTL\/G\/4\/1<\/a>) with a bus song on one side and classical music to a bus route on the other. As I delved into the records, I also found some international archives including an embroidered Romanian Diploma (D-3410\/7\/3<\/a>). This is in the Yetties archive, an English folk music group from Yetminster who had played folk festivals in Romania.<\/p>\n There are digital archives in the Windrose Rural Media Trust section which include farm radio recordings from 2003 to 2009 (D-WRS\/P\/19<\/a>). The internet radio station was aimed at family farms to help with isolation. As the project continued it made links to community broadcasters in Malawi and Australia and collaborated with an Irish community radio station. Some of these recordings can be accessed on-site at Dorset History Centre via our digital archive. The more I look into the archives the more I feel anyone could find something amazing linked to their interests within our archive database.<\/p>\n At the beginning of August, I spent the day at One World Festival in Borough Gardens, Dorchester which was organised by Dorchester Town Council and the South West Dorset Multicultural Network. In the gazebo there was a display made by two students on work experience at the History Centre which proved to be very popular. The display highlighted some of the archives we have with an international link. It was wonderful to meet and talk to so many people during the day, some had visited before and some will now explore the archives or attend an event.<\/p>\n I am looking forward to working with organisations and communities across Dorset. The Dorset History Centre is for everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the summer we were joined by Debbie, as our new Past Lives Future Proofed Community Engagement Officer. We’ve given her a couple of months to get to grips with the role and learn about how DHC works, and now we wanted to introduce her to readers, and explain a little more about what she… Read more Introducing Debbie<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1892,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,744],"tags":[82,349,109],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1892"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5344,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5341\/revisions\/5344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/files\/2026\/08\/Approaching-the-island-14-7-2026-scaled.jpg\")