Seven stages, and
your part in each.
You are never handed a questionnaire. Someone comes, listens, and asks.
01
Listen
A first private conversation about who and what matters, and why now. No material needed, nothing to prepare. We talk about what you are worried about as much as what you want.
Afterwards we write down what we think the commission is, in plain words, and send it to you. If we have understood it wrongly, this is where it costs nothing to say so.
02
Gather
Photographs, films, tapes, letters, papers, files, from wherever they are kept and whoever is keeping them. Originals are handled, scanned and returned. Nothing has to be sorted first. The disorder is information.
Your part. Telling us where things are, and who else has some. Originals are collected and returned by hand, never posted. They are insured for the time they are with us, at a value agreed in writing before anything moves.
03
Ask
Recorded conversations with the people who know. Where they are comfortable, in the language they think in, in sessions short enough that nobody gets tired.
They can stop, skip a subject, or come back to it another day. They can ask for something to be struck. A subject that is closed stays closed.
04
Research
Records, registers, places and dates, where they help. We check what can be checked and we say clearly what cannot.
We do not go looking for a more impressive ancestor, and we do not fill gaps with what was probably true.
05
Shape
Editing, writing, making. Film, book, audio, archive, in the combination agreed at the start and revisited once we know what the material actually is.
This is the longest stage and the quietest. We show work in progress at agreed points rather than disappearing.
06
Review
The family sees the whole thing before it is finished. Not a presentation. A working session where things get cut.
Anyone recorded has a say over their own material. If two people remember something differently, both versions can stay. There is no publication to resolve it for.
07
Look after
Delivery in the agreed forms, and a written plan for where everything lives, in what formats, who can open it, and when it gets checked again.
The last session is not a handover of files. The boxes are opened with you and each thing is named out loud. The plan is read aloud too, not left on paper.
How long it takes
Between three weeks and six months, depending on how much there is and how many people we record. We agree a schedule before we start, and we do not shorten it by cutting the listening.
Care and confidentiality
Private, unless you decide otherwise.
Who can open your material, who owns it, and what happens to it when the work is finished. All of it is agreed in writing before a single photograph is collected.
Who can see it
During a commission, the people working on it and the people you have named. Nobody else. We do not show work in progress to anyone outside that list, including for our own purposes. After delivery, access is whatever you set, and you can change it. Everything is delivered on media you keep. We can put a copy behind a link as well if that suits you, but the durable copy is the one that counts. Nothing you hold depends on a login to us.
Who owns it
The family owns it. You hold the finished work and the source files we made, and every right to use, show, copy and publish them, for as long as you like. We keep no right to use, licence or publish any of it, and we register nothing in our own name. If the company ever stopped, none of that would change, because none of it was ever ours.
Showing the work
We would like to show some of what we make. We will only ever ask after a commission is finished, never before, and a no costs nothing. Anything on this website not marked as a real family’s work is a demonstration we made ourselves.
Using external services
We do not upload private family material to any external creative or AI service without asking you first, about that specific material, for that specific purpose. Which tools we use depends on what your material needs. For most commissions it is ordinary professional software on our own machines. Where confidentiality asks for it, your material is handled on equipment that has never been connected to the internet. We tell you which arrangement applies to your commission before any of it starts.
Afterwards
A written plan covering formats, copies, where each one lives, who can open it, and when it is next checked. There is no subscription and no recurring cost. What we deliver is made to be kept by you, without us. Open formats, more than one copy, a catalogue anyone in the family can use, and the plan printed and in the lid of the first box. If you want us to keep checking on it at an interval, we agree that separately.
What we will not claim
We will not tell you your material is safe forever, or certified, or guaranteed. Nobody can promise that. We can specify paper, binding, file formats, number of copies, storage locations and who is accountable for each, and we can put all of it in writing.