history

Do you have a story to tell about the Open University? Were you a student on the very early courses? Or has the OU changed your life?

Forty years after its first students began studying in 1971, the Open University has launched a project to bring together the entire history of the OU for the first time.

Central to project is the new History of the Open University website where former students, alumni and staff are invited to record their memories and leave comments.

These will build into the first complete, comprehensive account of the OU’s developmentp to the present day, including its impact on the world of education and on wider society.

“This is not going to be a conventional institutional history,” says Dr Dan Weinbren, who is heading the History of the OU project. “We can’t hope to have the full picture sitting here in an office in Walton Hall. The website will enable more voices to be heard.

“We particularly want to hear people’s stories about the OU’s impact on them. It might be personal, political, intellectual, ideological …there’s a whole set of ways in which this institution had had a significant impact.”

As well as the website, which will be a permanent resource for future researchers, Dr Weinbren is writing a History of the OU book which he says will be “interesting to an audience which wants to know where the OU is going, as well as where we came from”.

Dr Weinbren and project manager Rachel Garnham will  also be mining the wealth of archive material about the OU, much of which has not been brought together before.

To share your views, memories or images, go to Tell us your OU story.

Image shows Professor Sir Edmund Leach addressing an early Open University residential school

 

 

 

 

Google Jennie Lee or Baroness Boothroyd and you'd be hard pushed not to notice the OU. But there are some unsung heroines behind the OU's success today.

Anne Drake, the OU's first occupational health nurse
Listen to an archive audio of Anne talk about the early days of OU and how it became her family. Find out which well known OU academic she chastised for being messy.

Naomi Sargant, Britain's first woman Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1933-2006)
Naomi (pictured above) was hailed as the voice of the students. A life long socialist, she was dedicated to breaking down barriers to education. During her time at the OU, between 1970 and 1981, Naomi became Britain’s first female Pro-Vice-Chancellor. She was also Professor of Applied Social Research. Naomi’s obituary in The Times reads: “Naomi saw education, especially education for adults, as the foundation stone of democracy, and fought tirelessly in powerful writing, speeches and debate against all who would restrict it.”

Dame Jane Drew, Architect (1911-1996)
Take the OU's Legacy Tour and you'll see Jane's work, it being literally part of the foundations. One of the first buildings on campus, the Wilson Building (pictured) is the result of the design work of Dame Drew and her husband Maxwell Fry. Revered by some of Britain's most distinguished architects, she was also an ardent feminist employing women exclusively in the formative days of her career.