Youth and two wheeled culture are two things that seem to have always gone hand in hand…..
From the early days of The Wild One and the mods and rockers of the 60’s to the modern day 12 O’Clock Boys and the Bike Life movement, the links between youth, rebellion, freedom and motorcycles have always been married together throughout many different decades, styles and subcultures. The history that’s come before is something that heavily influences (and we mean real influence not “influencers” here) the future and where we’re all headed, even in motorcycles. That’s what the awesome Museum of Youth Culture, founded in 2015, strives to document and safeguard, to ensure that we all have access to this history for years to come.
We caught up with the archive’s manager, Lisa der Weduwe, to find out all about their work to archive and document Britain’s youth from the last 100 years and learn why it’s important to preserve youth culture for future generations.
The 59 Club - London
First of all can you tell everyone a bit about the Museum of Youth Culture and what you’re about?
The Museum of Youth Culture is an emerging museum that celebrates the incredible, but often overlooked story of young people. The museum is formed from the collections of Youth Club Archive, and contains over 150,000 photographs, objects and ephemera that document youth culture. From the Mods and Rockers to more recent movements such as Grime and Emo, the museum covers the everyday experiences of being young, from your first job to your first love, that period of life where you’re really finding yourself.
Last year we launched our Grown up in Britain community archiving project, with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It was us saying: the Museum of Youth Culture is going to happen, now we want you help us tell the story of being young, and whether you have one photograph, a whole family album or just an amazing story to tell, you can be part of the museum. It is a campaign that continues to amaze us really, with new stories coming in every week that are helping us tell the story of British youth culture.
Earlier this year within the campaign we launched the Outreach Champions programme, which has been about looking at the stories we’ve collected so far and working with researchers to uncover stories and narratives that are underrepresented in the collection. So there’s been a real focus has been on LGBTQ+ and BAME stories, as well as more rural narratives. We weren’t sure how that was going to go in the midst of a lockdown, but it’s been really exciting to see the stories that we’ve received through that programme so far!
Jo Wilson
Why did you start Museum of Youth Culture?
The archive, which was founded in 1997, really came out of a realisation that no one was trying to collate, collect and preserve youth culture histories, and that it was at risk of being lost.
We started using the Museum of Youth Culture properly for the first time last year, and although the response has mainly been incredible, we also had people say that; ‘youth culture is a bit niche isn’t it?’, ‘you should join another museum’ and even that we are ‘the best advertisement for national service there has ever been’. I think those responses really reflect a wider dialogue that youth culture isn’t important social history and the often negative representation we have of young people in the media. I think it’s been these attitudes that have meant that often youth culture hasn’t been seen as a real part of our social heritage and that’s really why the Museum of Youth Culture came into being!
We originally found you guys on social media through some amazing images that were submitted to you from people who rode motorcycles in their youth. Do you find that you mostly get submissions from guys in motorcycling or do you get a lot of women too?
We’ve had some amazing submissions through from people who rode, and mostly still ride motorcycles, from the 1920s onwards. Although we’ve had more photographs from guys on bikes, it’s been a pretty even - though we’re always game for more female stories. We’ve also had loads of family-related motorcycling photographs through - fathers with daughters and sons, uncles and aunts, newlyweds - it’s been exciting to see the family affair that is motorcycles, the passion being passed through the generations.
Are a lot of the motorcycle submissions from London or are you getting them from all across the UK?
I’d say it’s mostly been in and around London, but we’ve had motorcycle submissions from across the UK, including the far reaches of Scotland! Because we’ve always been based in London, it is definitely where we have the biggest profile and the collections are still skewed towards the city, although that’s starting to change through our Grown up in Britain project. Our original plan for 2020 was to travel to cities and towns across the UK to run events and collect photographs and memories for the museum - we were talking to people in Newcastle, Carlisle, Coventry, Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast to name a few - but that’s on hold. For now we are focusing on encouraging people to dig through their family albums and shoe box archives whilst there isn’t much else to do! Sharing awkward teen memories is a brilliant way to connect with people in these crazy times! Why not get your mum to get out her photographs from when she was young or give your granddad a call and talk about what it was like being a teenager in the 40s or 50s?
Stephen Andrew
Stephen Andrew
What’s your favourite motorcycle story or image that you’ve come across so far?
When we launched our Grown up in Britain campaign, we were really hoping to get our first pre-WW2 photographs through. I was chatting to a lovely guy called Kevin about the stories behind some of his photographs from the eighties, and he started telling me about his mother-in-law. She was a flapper in the 1920s, which was already a pretty out there thing, but in her free time she also rode around on a WW1 army surplus Royal Enfield bike, sometimes whilst dressed up in her flapper gear! He promised to send me through some photos, and the next day he did and they didn’t disappoint! It was our first photograph from the 1920s, meaning we now have 100 years of youth culture, and it is to this day one of my favourite submissions.
Florence Reeves - 1920s
We’re guessing that you must have some amazing images from the ton up boys and rockers of the 50s and 60s as it was such a huge movement in youth culture. Which are your favourites?
For a long time we didn’t have many photographs from the original 50s and 60s ton up boys and rockers, and instead it was mostly revivalists from the 80s onwards. Then last year we worked with the 59 Club to digitise their archive of hundreds of photographs. We met them at their club house in Plaistow to talk about celebrating their story in the museum, when they pulled out this big archival box filled with amazing prints of the club’s history. We spent the next couple of weeks bringing along our scanner and scanning the whole collection. The story of the 59 Club is just amazing, how a youth club started by a vicar ended up becoming one of the biggest motorcycle clubs in the world.
The 59 Club - London
From the 1950s film The Wild One and the ton up boys of the 60s right up to today’s popular bike life culture movement, motorcycles seem to have always had a place in youth culture. Why do you think that youth culture has such strong links to motorcycle culture?
I think so much of youth culture, especially more subcultural movements, is borne out of the want to break free from your parents and your day-to-day life and responsibilities, and in many ways the motorcycle is the perfect way to get that sense of freedom; they're fast, they’re dangerous and they’re a form of transport that means you can go wherever you please! In post-war Britain motorcycles also became affordable for working class kids, so that combined with the rock n roll music and movies such The Wild One created the ultimate rebel image - and that has really stuck.
Young people now might be less likely to be dressed like the leather boys of the 50s and 60s, but they’ll get that same sense of freedom from being able to jump on their bike and ride off somewhere with their mates, and you can’t beat that really!
Karen Perry
Why is preserving youth culture so important?
That period from your mid-teens to your early twenties is such a formative period in your life, where you’re really finding yourself and developing that sense of self, so it shapes everything after that. Through that process, young people are always trying out new things and breaking new ground, being incredibly creative and innovative, whilst also responding to the times that they’re in. In many ways, youth culture is a brilliant lens through which to look at our recent social history, but it’s only recently that people have started paying attention to that story.
We always talk about young people being the future, yet at the same time so many of the stories we read about young people are negative. It goes back to an earlier question about why we started the museum - it’s been the negative attitudes around young people that I feel have meant that youth culture hasn’t been as well preserved as other areas of our social history, and now that story is at risk of being lost. Hopefully, by preserving and championing the story of young culture as the Museum of Youth Culture, we’ll help change attitudes around young people for the future generations.
Heidi Maund
Are you solely looking for photograph submissions?
Not at all no - as we are moving closer to the physical Museum of Youth Culture, we’re also diversifying away from photography. The collections now also include physical ephemera, such as magazines and flyers, clothing and other objects, and oral histories. We’ve also had through our first home videos, which has been really exciting. Photography will always be a super important part of what we do, as we have come from a photographic archive, but it’s been amazing to see what else is out there!
What dates and eras are you ideally looking for images from?
It’s super open really - our submissions now range from 1910 to some that were shot during the lockdown, so we’ve gone beyond the 100 years that was our original goal! An area of focus for us is memories pre-1970s, since they’re most at risk of being lost at the moment. There are also fewer photographs from this time because cameras were just more rare and expensive, so we’re keen to preserve those stories. On the other end of the scale, we’re looking out for early 00s subcultures such as Emo and Grime. They were the first subcultures where the internet played a big role, and they used early cameraphone technology, so the photographs we do have are generally really bad quality - just a couple of pixels wide!
Gail Thibert
What's the deal with how you're taking submissions? Are they open to anyone, as long as they spent their youth in Britain?
The great thing about the Museum of Youth Culture and our call out is that everyone’s been young, so everyone can be part of the museum. Although Grown up in Britain talks of people’s experiences being young in Britain, we also have stories from people that moved to the UK later in life and those that have never lived here - so really anyone can get involved.
How can someone submit their photos to you?
The easiest way to submit is via our online form, which you can find at: museumofyouthculture.com/submit. But you can also drop us an e-mail (info@youthclubarchive.com) or send us a message on Instagram or Facebook!