Following receipt of the substantial funds last month the Trustees moved quickly to purchase top-line equipment, such as that used by leading museums, to enable them to record residents recollections of their early life in Welwyn Garden City. First priority is to teach volunteers how to use the equipment and to organise protocols for interviewing residents with stories to tell.
Celebrations were the order of the day as news came through of a gift large enough to enable the purchase of recording equipment for the project to collect memories.
After some time spent developing the final aims & objectives of the proposed Trust for embodying in its Memorandum and Articles of Association, application forms were filed with the Charity Commissioners and Companies House this week to set up ‘ The Welwyn Garden Heritage Trust ‘. A small signing ceremony took place on Monday 2nd October as the trustees gathered together to formally complete the process that began last May.
Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier hated the cites of their time with an overwhelming passion. All three went on to become urban planning’s greatest visionaries. Only one of the three, however, motivated by the poverty and slum conditions suffered by so many in the late Victorian era , went on to write ‘Garden Cities of Tomorrow’, a book that became the most influential publication in the history of 20th century town planning. Welwyn Garden City is an outstanding demonstration of that vision and the reason why we need to celebrate it and protect its heritage.