This public history project explores place and memory in the waterfront districts of seaport cities, taking Liverpool as its case-study. Historically, the waterfront zone was a vibrant, multi-functional space, frequented at different times of the day and night by a plethora of people, including mariners, merchants and clerks, shipping office workers, industrial workers, dock and warehouse labourers, bartenders, sex workers, police officers, tourists and social reformers. Many aspects of this society survived into the 1960s, when airlines and containerisation removed the need for most people to work in or even visit the urban waterfront, resulting in rapid dereliction and community dispersal. The focus of this project is the visual capture of personal and community experience of Liverpool's central waterfront district in the 1950s and 1960s, the last generation of traditional seaport society. Cultural mapping workshops and film-making will encourage contributors to identify and recreate their own histories of this space, exploring community identity and continuity, and generating findings for academic and museum research. \n\nOutputs in the form of visual memory maps and video histories will enhance knowledge of the built heritage and material culture of these spaces, primarily by identifing and interpreting key sites of memory. The project moves beyond earlier oral histories, using cultural mapping methodology to document cityscapes and people's experience within them. The core data collection will take the form of memory-mapping workshops with former waterfront residents, workers and visitors. Participants will create annotated maps answering specific questions about the locations of sounds, traffic, different groups of people, dangers and threats, and places of varying significance to them at different points in their lives. Participants will also be asked to discuss archive photographs and film, comment on relevant museum collections, and bring materials of their own. In the course of these workshops, the project will acquire a rich collection of visual, oral and material evidence. Film-makers will then interview selected participants on location, building explict visual connections between sites of memory and recollection. Broader public debate and engagement will be encouraged through the creation of a website, which will host material contributed to the project in the form of image, text and film. \n\nThe project outcomes reflect the complementary priorities of the museum and academic partners, and will be created collaboratively. An interactive web resource will combine elements of the memory maps generated in the participant workshops with film and audio commentaries on significant locations, artefacts and images. This resource, along with the artefacts and archive collections themselves, will provide a new context for interpretation and use of collections, and should form the basis of future exhibits. An urban history journal article will explore the project's methods and findings in the context of the PI's existing (text-based) work on earlier eras of waterfront economy and culture. A museum studies or public history journal article will discuss the project's methods and findings in comparison with earlier examples of waterfront community involvement and oral history in museums, considering in particular this project's appreciable broadening of subject matter and exploitation of new media for collection and dissemination. A 20-minute documentary film will encapsulate the community, museum and academic elements of the collaboration, and will be on display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. All project materials will be acquired into the permanent collections of National Museums Liverpool and will be publicly accessible, via the website and the Maritime Archives & Library. \n