CityLife Stories: Intergenerational Community Life Writing

In 2014 I co-founded CityLife Stories, and project managed it for a decade until 2024. CityLife is a community engagement and research project in London that gathers life narratives from older urban community members by pairing creative writers with them for conversational sessions, from which they produce biographical stories. The project immortalises the history, vibrancy, diversity and ever-changing landscape of the urban environment, and platforms unheard voices for a new way of storytelling and holding meaningful exchanges.

I built the administrative systems, contributed to research design and field work across the projects multiple phases; managed project development, writer training, recruitment and management, and co-developed the ethical framework we use to train them; led on participant safeguarding and effective collaboration with our community partner organisations; led on field research including sourcing information on marginalised groups and their support services and networks; and established our network of partners for the project that included centres and establishments such as Toynbee Hall, Age UK, Aging Well Dagenham, Pepper Pot Day Centre, Cody Dock and Stones End Day Centre. I coordinated the editing and production of ca.100 stories from the communities we worked in, and was co-editor of our two print publications.

The last phase I worked on, COVID: Lockdown Stories which was funded by the British Academy, took place remotely for the first time in CityLife’s history due to restrictions, creating connections and conversations between younger and older people, while we all found our way through the 2020/2021 lockdowns. Keep scrolling for our publications and some photos of the earlier EastLife years, 2014-2017.

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Biographical Stories

Biographical pieces I have written for community elders on this project can be found on my Writing page.

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CityLife Publications

Dodd, S., Maddison, S., Masserano, E., McWatt, T. (eds.) (2023) Lockdown Stories. London: University of East Anglia and University of Brighton. ISBN: 978-1-3999-2827-4. Hard copy available for loan at Bethnal Green Library, Tower Hamlets.

Masserano, E., Dodd, S., Maddison, S. & McWatt, T. (2021) ‘Stories of COVID-19: Social Pasts & Futures in the CityLife Project,’ The Sociological Observer, 3(1). Available at: https://www.sociology.ie/publications.html (Issue 3)

McWatt, T., Dodd, S. and Maddison, S. (eds.) (2015) EastLife: An Anthology of Life Writing. London: University of East London (PDF). ISBN: 978-1-9100-5635-6. Hard copy available for loan at Bethnal Green Library, Tower Hamlets.

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