The oral history
Recorded accounts
Since 1994, anybody who attends has been asked whether they would sit for an hour and say what it has been like. These are the transcripts. Nothing has been cut for content, and where somebody is critical of the Institute the criticism is printed at its full length and is not answered inside the account.
The oral history has been running since 1994. Anybody who has attended is asked, in the ordinary way, whether they would sit for an hour and say what it has been like; about a third agree, and the recordings are catalogued whatever they say.
Twenty-nine accounts are held. Nine are printed here. The selection was made by the archivist on the rule that the printed set must contain at least as many people who are critical of the Practice as people who are not, and it does.
Nothing has been cut for content. Where a passage has been cut it is marked, and the reason is always a name or a health detail belonging to somebody who did not consent to be in the recording.
Peter Halloran
ORA/2011/03 · Speaks against it
On the cost of institutional wording, and why he stopped.
Attended 1984–2011. No longer continuous. River House.
Gwenllian Idris
ORA/1996/01 · Speaks against it
On the phrase no longer continuous, and on being described in the third person by people she taught to cook.
Attended 1979–1994. No longer continuous. River House.
Amara Boateng
ORA/2023/02 · Of two minds
On declining the Fellowship, and on the silence not working for her.
Attended 2016–2019. Declined the Fellowship. Attends occasionally. Briar House.
Tomaž Vrhovec
ORA/2019/04 · Speaks well of it
On documentation as a habit, and on what the habit costs.
Attending since 1991. Steward, Karst House. Karst House.
Marta Sandoval
ORA/1994/02 · Of two minds
On the hospice rota, and on the founders being wrong about several things.
Attended 1974–1988. One of the nine at the grange hall. North House.
Iona Reid
ORA/2021/05 · Speaks well of it
On repair as the actual content, and on distrusting her own fluency.
Attending since 2001. Steward, Fell House. Fell House.
Nnamdi Okafor
ORA/2024/01 · Of two minds
On leaving for ordinary reasons and coming back sixteen years later.
Attended 1998–2006. Returned 2022. Orchard House.
Ase Lindqvist
ORA/2017/06 · Of two minds
A neighbour on the parking, the meal, and being asked nothing for thirty-one years.
Never attended. Neighbour of Shore House for thirty-one years. Shore House.
Wilfrid Prentice
ORA/2005/03 · Speaks well of it
On surveying the houses on foot, and on being asked the same question every year.
Attending since 1983. Entry incomplete. Unattached.
The whole sound holding, its provenance, and the rule limiting how much of it may be one voice are described with the rest of what the houses print and record in what we print and record.