The Concept

Smugglers 2010 celebrates the smuggling heritage of Bournemouth as part of the town's bi-centenary. This project will enable schools and local communities to discover more about the town's smuggling heritage.

From May 2010 Primary and Secondary schools throughout Bournemouth will be supported in engaging with their own local community stakeholders. Schools will be supported by visiting artists to explore their own local heritage and any smuggling links. Each school is being invited to create their own treasure trails based on their local and/or smuggling heritage .There will be a focus on young people interviewing older members of their local communities and excerpts from these recordings will be part of the Smugglers 2010 Heritage display at the BIC. Although many school communities have well known smuggling heritage to draw on.

Smugglers 2010 is also about the children and young people involved. We hope they will find their own smuggling treasures by learning more about themselves :

• If you could smuggle dreams, whose dream would you smuggle …what would you do with it ...where would you go?
• If you could smuggle ideas what would you do and how could you help make the world a better place?
• If you could smuggle trust who would you give yours to?
• What is your treasure?
• Where are you smuggling it from/to ...?
• What is your treasure worth to you... to someone else?
• How will you smuggle your treasure? In a barrel? In your heart?
• When will your treasure become a gift?

Timeline

There will be a multi-sensory timeline created at the Bournemouth Central Library, going back 200 years along a smugglers rope which shows some of the key events in the history of Bournemouth.

The Great Bournemouth Treasure Trail

Monday 28th June to Saturday 3rd July.

This major event, which has smugglers with their booty as its theme, will be closely linked to the town's heraldic crest. The town has a crest with specific elements representing key aspects of its 200 year history. The project will have a treasure trail inviting members of the public to search throughout the town for representations of the crest (hidden in shop windows, leisure centres etc) and there will even be a live treasure trail/hunt on Bournemouth beach for "real" treasure buried in the sand!

Memorabilia and Autumn Music

During the year, regular visitors to Bournemouth hotels will be asked to bring memorabilia of earlier visits to add to a live display/installation at the BIC (Bournemouth International Centre).

Smugglers 2010 continues into the Autumn with a musical project with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a final sharing/family event in October with music, drama and readings based on Bournemouth's smuggling heritage.

The Schedule

Preparations for Smugglers 2010 began back in September 2009, when we had to liaise with other stakeholders for booking and research purposes. Schools project work began in May 2010.

The focus on the Big Bournemouth Treasure Trail will be 28th June to Saturday 3rd July 2010

The multi-sensory timeline at the Central Library will begin in June 2010 and remain until resited

The final heritage celebration event will be mid-October 2010 (provisionally the 15th October)

The Smugglers Heritage Trail will be completed by Spring 2011

Our hopes for Smugglers 2010

We hope that Smugglers 2010 will produce:-

i) a sense of awe and wonder in all the young people taking part, which will develop into a sense of pride in, and responsibility for, their local town and its heritage.

ii) when the interactive installation at the BIC closes, all the resources that have been built up over the summer will be transferred to the Heritage Section at Bournemouth Central Library. These resources will include transcripts of conversations with visitors about their memories of Bournemouth past, recordings of interviews made by local schools with members of their local communities, photos, old cine video footage of early Bournemouth, leaflets, articles etc. It is our hope that there will be enough new resources acquired to set up an exhibition based solely on Bournemouth's smuggling heritage.

If you have anything you would like to donate or loan for this exhibition please do bring it along to the BIC Smugglers 2010 Exhibition during August. iii) a website which will be regularly updated

iv) the Smugglers Heritage Trail which will remain as a resource for years to come