A free new online picture archive has launched to help us celebrate and share historical moments from Northern Ireland.
Memory Lane, from the owners of The Mirror and The Express, is being launched as we go the latest coronavirus restrictions.
Despite events being cancelled, the new tool allows people to celebrate and share historical moments.
It follows a YouGov survey carried out for Memory Lane suggesting that the past is in danger of being lost because 80% of us haven’t digitised all our photos.
According to the newly commissioned nostalgia survey for Memory Lane:
- 67% of the population are looking for something that brings them comfort
- More than half of UK adults (55%) are thinking about what we did before the pandemic
- Almost a third of the population (31%) are looking at old photographs to get themselves through these strange times
So Memory Lane is asking the public to preserve, discover, celebrate and share images which matter to them as we live through another challenging time during the pandemic.
Fronting the launch is Professor of History, author and broadcaster Kate Williams, who is passionate about the preservation of memories.
She said: "Photographs are one of the most important social documents we have access to, allowing us to understand society and communities from different generations.
"We learn so much more about our past when we look at the photographs of everyday people as opposed to formal photos of royalty and aristocracy. If important images languish in the loft, there is a real danger they may be lost forever."
Memorylane.co.uk is a free tool providing a home for photographs that may have remained hidden for years.
A rich, interactive and nostalgic archive with content searchable by location, date, topics, people, categories and more - it aims to create a bigger, more inclusive picture of history by allowing you to preserve, discover, share and colourise the past.
