Garry Harcourt Tregidga is an academic at the Institute of Cornish Studies in the United Kingdom.[1]
Contents |
Garry Tregidga undertook both his MPhil and PhD [2] degrees with the University of Exeter. He was appointed as the Assistant Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies in October 1997 and lives in his native mid-Cornwall. He has published a wide range of articles on Cornish themes and is the author of The Liberal Party in South West Britain since 1918: Political Decline, Dormancy and Rebirth. (2000) and a co-author of Mebyon Kernow and Cornish Nationalism (2003).
In 1998 he founded the Cornish History Network, a research forum based at the Institute.[3] Two years later his growing interest in the potential of oral history and cultural memory led to the creation of the Cornish Audio Visual Archive (CAVA) for the study and documentation of the region’s oral and visual culture.
In 2002 he was awarded £172,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other funding sources for the development of Cornish Braids, a two-year fieldwork programme at the Institute that seeks to create a multigenerational profile of Cornish life in the twentieth century. The work of CAVA has recently been extended into the areas of project analysis and commercial development through Garry’s successful application for funding from the European Social Fund.
The Cornish Audio-Visual Archive (CAVA) was created in 2000 for the study and documentation of the oral and visual culture of Cornwall. It advocates an innovative and interdisciplinary approach towards interpreting the events of the past and present that harnesses the multimedia power of oral history, cultural memory, sociolinguistics, ethnomusicology, film representations, photographic studies and landscape narrative.
CAVA seeks to build on the pioneering work of the Cornish Oral History Forum in the late 1990s and the Cornish Film and Video Archive a decade earlier. CAVA is keen to encourage wider participation in the research and recording process through a long-term programme of educational and cultural initiatives.
Based at the Institute of Cornish Studies and led by Dr Garry Tregidga, the Institute’s Assistant Director, the CAVA initiative is being developed in partnership with the College of St Mark & St John, Cornwall Centre, Cornwall Heritage Trust, Cornwall Record Office and the National Trust. This network of educational establishments, resource providers and heritage organisations is further strengthened through the active involvement of associated groups and individuals throughout Cornwall. CAVA is also keen to develop wider links with cultural, educational and archival institutions in other parts of the world, particularly those with an interest in the oral and visual dimension to regional cultures and identities.
Dr Garry Tregidga of Bugle, near St Austell was named as a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth for services to Cornish history, taking the name "Map Rosvean" - "Son of Rosevean".