What have you done this month that you’d like to share with people 100 years from now?

In 1898 five friends who grew up in Berwick-upon-Tweed but had relocated across the country decided to keep in touch with each other by producing an annual scrapbook of monthly letters, photographs, drawings and paintings, and other ephemera such as restaurant menus, postcards and Berwick news clippings. Each year they compiled the correspondence into an annual edition of ‘The Quintet’ which would then be shared with the group. The first edition of the Quintet was produced in 1899 and it continued until 1911.

In response to the Quintet, artist and creative producer Ben Lewis, in collaboration with The Living Barracks, wants your help to explore the ordinary and everyday lives of people living in and around Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Ben is asking the people of Berwick ‘what have you done this month that you’d like to share with people 100 years from now?’

Responses to this question can come in any physical form – a letter or piece of writing, a photograph, a ticket stub, a drawing or painting, a restaurant menu or receipt, a postcard, the page of a book you’ve been reading, an article from a newspaper. The more ordinary and everyday the better! Ben is interested in your recent history – big or small. He wants to inspire you to see the beauty in the banal, the creative in the commonplace. Submissions will form the basis for a new Quintet or ‘zine’.

Submissions can be left in our project postboxes at: The Corner House, 31 Church Street, Berwick and at Berwick Sports and Leisure Centre. Or you can post submissions to Ben Lewis c/o The Maltings, G Block, Ravensdowne Barracks, Parade, Berwick-upon-Tweed TD15 1DG.