Het project Ooggetuigen van de Gaswinning legt de komende twee jaar (vanaf april 2024) de verhalen van ten minste 100 mensen op video vast. Zo wordt op een unieke manier de recente geschiedenis aan de hand van persoonlijke verhalen verteld. De afgelopen jaren zijn al veel verhalen verzameld. Maar niet eerder zijn de getuigenissen van de inwoners en betrokkenen bij de gaswinning op een systematische en wetenschappelijke wijze vastgelegd. Dit initiatief wordt geleid door onderzoeker Nienke Busscher en geestelijk verzorger Marjo van Bergen. De interviews worden vanaf april 2024 opgenomen en gepubliceerd in de colectie van de filmbank Groningen. U kunt dus nog meedoen aan dit project! 

Hier kunt vindt u meer informatie over dit project.

En hier kunt u contact opnemen om mee te doen aan de interviews.

Hier is een (NPO-)interview met de leiders van het project.

Ooggetuigen van de Gaswinning is een initiatief van negen organisaties met wortels in Groningen naar een idee van Diepduik Media. Iedere partij brengt eigen expertise in, waardoor de (wetenschappelijke) kwaliteit wordt gegarandeerd. Speciaal voor dit project wordt een stichting opgericht. Zo wordt de onafhankelijkheid geborgd en kan de opbrengst van het project goed en zorgvuldig worden beheerd.

The interviews were conducted on the occasion of Rotterdam Celebrates the City in 2016, a cultural event around the commemoration of the reconstruction, and the term “reconstruction” should be understood broadly in this collection. For example, in addition to architects and municipal workers from the postwar period, Rotterdammers with an immigrant background and younger Rotterdammers were interviewed about their views on life in the Maas City.

Initially, the goal of project Soul of the Reconstruction was not focused historical research, but the compilation of an audiobook of the same name for a wide audience. This book consists of four CDs with excerpts from the interviews, along with brief descriptions of the people interviewed. These descriptions have been reproduced in DANS.

The interviews have been deposited with DANS. The Stadsarchief Rotterdam preserves the collection. The process of making the collection available online was carried out by the Erasmus Studio of Erasmus University Rotterdam. They took care of the metadata of the collection, tested automatic speech recognition and created a standard workflow for this process, so that in the future institutions will know which steps to take when they want to make interviews available for research in the Media Suite.

The interviews are almost entirely in Dutch and consist of an audio recording with a transcript attached. These transcripts vary greatly in quality: many of the transcripts are incomplete and some only have time-stamped subjects. Of the total 86 interviews, not all will be uploaded at one time due to privacy statements that are not yet complete. This is the reason why for now not all interviews from number 1 to 86 are online.

Ten huize van … is a Flemish talk show that first appeared on TV1 (Eén) in 1957.

Each episode, presenter Joos Florquin visited a Famous Fleming or Famous Dutchman and interviewed him in his own home. For three days he installed himself in the home of the person in question, while his camera crew shot footage. Most of the interviewees were from the political or cultural world. The first guest was Gerard Walschap. More than 250 followed. The interviews centered on the interviewees. They were able to talk freely and were only in the picture themselves. In other words, true oral history.

Over the decades, Florquin interviewed an impressive number of people. The interviews were written down afterwards, compiled and published in a series of books. When Florquin died in 1978, the program was also stopped for a long time.

Only in the 1990s did new episodes appear around “At the home of”, this time with Edward De Maesschalck as interviewer (34 episodes). From 2003 Frieda Van Wijck took over the presentation.

An overview of many of the interviewed:

Belga Sport is a Flemish documentary television series depicting turning points in Belgian sports history. The program, made by Woestijnvis and shown on the Flemish public broadcaster Canvas, digs up fragments from the VRT sports archives and sheds new light on “known” facts through testimonies. The subtitle therefore reads Old sports stories in a new light. The first series was broadcast in the spring of 2007. A new series was recently released in 2024. In June 2008, Belga Sport was awarded the Prize of Television Criticism. And in early 2011, the program received a nomination from the Flemish Television Stars in the category “Best Information Program.

There is also a podcast with the creators of Belga Sport. Which can be found here.

Belpop is a TV program about the Belgian pop scene on Canvas. It refers to belpop, a collective term for music by Belgian groups. Since 2008, each episode deals with one artist, sometimes several artists get the floor. They talk about the past of belpop. Between 2008 and 2020, Luc Janssen did the interviews and voice-over. As of 2023, Bent van Looy took over this task. Also see a review of this last season here.

Jan Delvaux, contributor to the program, also published a book in 2011 entitled Belpop: de eerste vijftig jaar, in which he describes the history of Belgian pop music, from Kili Watch of The Cousins to the present.

Also see the following video on belgian music history: Belpop Bonanza #1000 – Een duik in 40 jaar AB geschiedenis

To celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, the Netherlands, in 2023. This was accompanied by a special exhibition, which was celebrated both by employees as well as former employees and volunteers. A start was made the year before to speak with former employees. Femke van Drongelen had tracked down several people who had helped build the outdoor museum, and ten former employees were also interviewed. Here you may find a video about the importance of these former employees.

Their stories illuminated the history of the museum and the history of Enkhuizen. All kinds of beautiful stories emerged as a result. These were incorporated into the exhibit.

The following people were interviewed:

• Bert Kruissink
• Erik Walsmit
• Pieter Jutte
• Siemen de Boer
• Johan Jesterhout
• Victor Kersten
• Thedo Fruithof
• Ferry Walberg
• Sjaak Dangermond
• Sjaak Tromp

The cultural heritage of design does not consist only of sketches, models, photographs or correspondence of designers. With design, there is also a strong interaction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, knowledge that may be passed on but which usually does not receive written expression. That is why the Flemish Architecture Institute conducted interviews with designers, policy makers and craftspeople. As a result, the interviews do not all cover the same topics and time periods. A mix of young and old and of profession was chosen; furniture maker, artist, design connoisseur and director of Design Flanders all have their say.

The following people were interviewed:

• Leonce Dekeijser (1924-2015), interior architect, he explains that in his college days, “interior design” did not actually exist. He took courses with architects and decorative arts and eventually earned a degree in furniture art. He discusses the teaching methods, the subjects and his teachers. He talks about the interaction between design and education

• José Vanderlinden (1920-?), furniture maker, the emphasis in the conversation with José Vanderlinden is, much more than in the conversation with Leonce Dekeijser, on the technical aspects of furniture making.

• Luc (1953-now) and Katrien Mestdagh (1980-now), stained glass artists, the conversation includes the neo-Gothic tradition in Ghent in terms of stained glass painting, and how it lives on to this day in atelier Mestdagh. They discuss the need for commissioning.
• Achiel Pauwels (1932-now), ceramist, he talks about how he learned the craft, how the teachers did not always give away the secrets of the craft just like that, and what the relationship was with the other art craft courses and the sculpture course. The conversation also explores the emphases he placed in his own classes and the importance he attached to drawing in doing so.
• Moniek Bucquoye (1948-2022), connoisseur and promoter of design, the talk provides an insight into how product development education was shaped in Flanders from a historical perspective. She highlights the difference between product development and industrial design.
• Lieven Daenens (1948-now), former director of the Design museum Ghent. Daenens discusses the evolution of the museum, its change of name and position with the advent of the museum decree in the 1990s. He discusses the quality of Belgian design culture and education in Belgium.
• Johan Valcke (1952-now), director of Design Flanders, the conversation with Valcke gives an insight into how art crafts and design were viewed in Belgium and Flanders from an economic point of view and a historical perspective.

The four interviewers were art historians and artists: Katarina Serulu, Marieke Pauwels, Eva Van Regenmortel and Aletta Rambaut

In the 1980s, the Broadcasting Museum, the predecessor of the Institute for Sound and Vision, realised that the time was ripe to record the stories of the pioneers of the National Broadcasting Corporation. The programme makers were now well into their old age. The Broadcasting Museum took this opportunity to record their life stories for posterity. These interviews – initiated by Harrie Vossen – contain valuable information about the early years of broadcasting and the further lives of the pioneers. After thirty years new interviews were held. 

This collection therefore consists of two parts that differ in character: the first set of 31 audio interviews with broadcasting pioneers dates from 1982-1993 and were conducted by Harrie Vossen. They therefore fall under the Harrie Vossen collection and can be found via DAAN, the digital archive of Sound & Vision with the metadata creator name: “Vossen”. These interviews cover the period 1930-1980 and highlight the early years of the National Broadcasting Company. Also see the following two overviews on the wiki of Sound & Vision concerning the collection Harrie Vossen and broadcasting pioneers: first, an overview of the interviewees of these interviews. Second, an overview of these interviews themselves with parts of the transcripts. The collection Harrie Vossen is a treasure trove for information regarding broadcasting pioneers.

The second series of 139 interviews is from 2010-2012 and deals with employees’ experiences of working for broadcasting. These interviews cover the period 1940-2012. Both young and old participated in these interviews so the content varies widely. These interviews can be found in the archive of Sound and Vision under the series Oral History of Broadcasting.

Also see our article on this collection “De verborgen schat van Beeld & Geluid” (The hidden treasure of Beeld & Geluid)

The interviews were conducted as part of Dirk Vlasblom’s publication Papua: a history. This book covers five centuries of Papua’s history, focusing on the period from 1945 onwards and with a special focus on the transfer from the Netherlands to Indonesia in 1962. The book focuses on the perspective of Papuans.

The interviews focus on events and experiences in the years 1920 – 2004.
They mainly discuss Indonesia and West Papua. Themes include World War II, Indonesian revolution, transfer to Indonesia in 1962, occupation.

The collection has been digitised and stored permanently at an e-depot.

Dirk Vlasblom (1952) studied cultural anthropology in Utrecht. With a brief interruption, he has been a correspondent for NRC Handelsblad in Jakarta since 1990. He previously published Jakarta, Jakarta – Reportages from Indonesia (1993), In a warung on the South Sea – Stories from Indonesia (1998) and Anchors & Chains – A Rotterdam Chronicle (2001).
In a compelling way, the author tells the stories of Papua. For this, he drew on unique sources. Protagonists and eyewitnesses speak for themselves, often for the first time. The archives of mission and mission were systematically researched for this book, also for the first time.
With this magisterial work, the author gives the Papuans their history.

Moluccans in the Netherlands

The interview project was conducted as part of the presentation and disclosure of collections. The purpose of the interviews was to capture stories for the renewed permanent exhibition starting in 2008.

The interviews focus on events and experiences in the years 1930 – 2008.
They mainly discuss the Netherlands, Indonesia and the Moluccas. Themes include KNIL, military police, residential areas Zeeland, residential area Elzenpasch, women’s emancipation, Moluccan church, management of residential areas.

A list of interviewees is available.

Interviewers: Jeanny Vreeswijk-Manusiwa and Nanneke Wigard.