The Life Lines Project – Carlisle in the Fifties

In November 2018, 20 of our Junior Club members joined a year-long project we called Life Lines, in order to research our rich heritage and find out what it was like to live in the Carlisle of the 1950’s. The project was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and made possible by the money raised by National Lottery players.

The fifties were chosen partly because of CYZ’s 1950’s-inspired café Desmond’s Diner, and also because they were an iconic decade that saw the end of post-war austerity and the beginning of popular youth culture. Carlisle did not escape the tide of time, and it underwent some dramatic changes in the fifties that have informed life in Carlisle as we know it today.

To learn more about the decade in this intergenerational project, our young people exchanged a series of letters and visits with pen-pals from local residential care homes. The letters asked the residents lots of questions about interesting topics such as sport, technology, leisure, shopping, buildings, jobs, and the fashions of the fifties. The children collated all the information together into an exhibition which ran at Tullie House Museum from September to October 13th 2019, published a booklet that summarised all the fascinating work they had done on the project, and even made a short film about their exploits.

If you would like to read the Life Lines booklet, then you can view it below by scrolling through the images, or contact us on 01228 516280 or email info@carlisleyouthzone.org and we will send you a hard copy in the post (limited number now left).