User:Tobybutler

Dr Toby Butler is a freelance heritage consultant and oral history trainer. He directed and worked on oral history projects in India, the USA, Wales and England. Toby is known internationally for his work exploring how history and memory can be used to interpret places and their pasts. He has a particular interest in using place-based multi-media and has created oral history trails along the River Thames with the Museum of London; in East Molesey for Elmbridge Council; and Victoria Park for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (www.memoryscape.org.uk). Toby directed the 'Ports of Call' project, that worked for several years with community groups and artists around the docks of East London to map and historically interpret the area (www.portsofcall.org.uk) and more recently the Bethnal Green Disaster Memorial Project in Bethnal Green, which included a smartphone delivered trail on the memorial site featuring interviews with disaster survivors (www.bgmemorial.org.uk). Toby recently evaluated heritage interpretation for a major lock restoration project Canal and Rivers Trust and currently working on an immersive app-based history trail with Living Maps and the London Legacy Development Corporation for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London, London. He is also 'Mapping Museums’ with Birkbeck, University of London, creating an online database and map of all the museums in the UK since 1960, featuring interviews with 50 museum founders. Toby is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, an Associate of the Museums Association and editor of History Workshop Journal. He was a Reader in History and Heritage Studies at the University of East London. tobybutler1@gmail.com

Phil Cohen (cultural theorist and ethnographer) was a former colleague at the University of East London. Dr Andrew Calcutt (also a former colleague) was a fellow researcher/writer on this entry.