Our commitment is to sharing memories of friendships, cooperative relationships, and types of solidarity which mean a lot to the people who preserve them, which can mean a lot to the communities in which they took place, and which can also inspire future cooperation that crosses social differences and divisions. We are looking especially to share memories about cooperation between individuals, families and social circles with different cultural or religious backgrounds which were once a part of ordinary life, and which are now no longer possible, or no longer easy, because of conflicts and because migration has created social separation. We want to share memories about less known personal relationships, which show how people are able to support each other, respect each other’s differences, and maintain a sense of personal equality even when  violence strikes their communities

This page is designed to give you what you need to submit a memory, or to communicate your responses and thoughts about the content and uses of the Memory Bank with the team.

We hope you will share true stories about your families and communities, and share with viewers, listeners and readers what makes these memories meaningful and valuable. It will help to share your thoughts, and as much information about what, where, and who made the cooperation and/or friendship remembered possible. Have the memories been an important part of your life, or the lives of the people involved? Are they an important part of local culture, or the ways in which your community sees itself? Do you associate particular places with these memories – are there places like the home, or a courtyard, or a market, or a community site, that are an important part of understanding where cooperation was a part of ordinary life? What has happened that has affected these practices of cooperation and friendship? Are there ways in which the memories are misunderstood in public, or are they neglected?

You may choose to share these as video or oral recordings, with photos, or as written messages.

When you describe your memory, please do focus as much as you wish on what makes it personally meaningful, and on the ways in which you see it can be valuable for communities of ordinary people today to appreciate these memories – how it can be valuable for social or educational reasons, and how it can be valuable in encouraging cooperation in daily life.

Memories will be shared, where necessary with the proper context, on the website. They may also be shared on social media for the purposes of promoting understanding across social divisions, and especially for the benefit of the communities from which these memories come. The material may also be shared by organisations which promote cross-communal cooperation for education, peacebuilding, development, and public understanding. We want communities to use these memories sensitively and for the benefit of ordinary people. It may be that these memories can connect community members who are now separated, or can help younger community members to learn of their heritage. Please share ideas for sharing the memories in ways that will benefit you and your communities, using the form below.

We will not share the contact details you share with us online. We will not share your contact details with any partners unless you have given explicit written permission to us for this purpose.

We appreciate that in many contexts you will feel it is necessary to share your stories anonymously, and it may also be that it is necessary to keep the location of the community you are describing unnamed. Wherever it is comfortable for you, we encourage to allow us to identify who you are on the website, to identify who is involved in the memory, and to identify the locality you are referring to. This personal testimony really matters for the promotion of trust in the memories of ordinary people, especially where these memories are not properly valued in communities and in the media. In many contexts, the reasons for anonymity will be clearly understood. When you submit your memories using the form below, you have an opportunity to state that you wish your personal details not to be shared publicly, and they will be kept anonymous. You may also choose to be referred to by a first name only, or simply as a resident of the local area or region you name.

We welcome contributions which honour different perspectives. We ask that contributors avoid referring to people of other communities in ways that may do harm or stoke current partisan conflicts. We are committed to sharing memories in a way that explains the value of those memories to the families and communities which hold them. We will seek to ensure the descriptions provided here only include relationships which demonstrate intercultural respect and interpersonal equality.

Our guarantees to you:
– You may request that any personal material that you share with us – personal stories and recordings – be withdrawn from the website, deleted or anonymised and we will do this directly.
– What you share will be used for the purposes of sharing, honouring and providing explanation and context for those memories through the Memory Bank.
– Material that is on the website of the Memory Bank will be shared on social media and with non-profit organisations that promote education and community-led development. We will work to avoid hostile representations and misrepresentations of the memories shared through the Memory Bank and by any organisation that partners with the Memory Bank. We will only work with partners committed to taking reasonable steps to address concerns expressed by you as contributors, honouring that the memories they wish to share are often deeply meaningful and sensitive.
– The material you share will be used to increase understanding, and to inspire and encourage people to appreciate the reasons for building relationships that matter. We will encourage initiatives that seek to make cooperation and community building work where people are free to act together with integrity. We will respond to initiatives which reduce ignorance and hatred. Your material and your personal information will not be shared with for-profit companies and government bodies.
– If you request that your material be shared anonymously, any personal information you give the Memory Bank team will be rigorously safeguarded.
– Our project will work consistently to promote understanding, sensitivity, and the good of the communities that we cooperate with. We acknowledge that memories are used in political propaganda, and that there are multiple ways of perceiving and remembering the past of a community, especially a pluralistic community. We will work persistently to distinguish the lives of real people from one-sided propaganda and stereotyping.

Creative Commons copyright
We will share the material on the website with a Creative Commons copyright: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. As you will see by clicking on the link, this allows the material to be shared and adapted for use, for non-profit purposes only.