A West Wiltshire husband and wife team, Sam and Sarah, are building Keepsake Family History, a new app designed to help families capture ancestor life stories before they’re lost – and turn them into lasting, shareable biographies. They’re now inviting local people to try the app in person at a hands-on workshop at The Old Town Hall in Trowbridge on Saturday 28 March.
It was shortly after the birth of their first daughter that Sam and Sarah began to capture their family history in earnest. There were so many stories to keep alive – Grandad’s childhood of tigers and princes in the Himalayan mountains; a formidable Geordie great-grandmother whose booming sweet shop business became local legend.
But the mission to curate all their research into a single book for their daughter ended in clutter – scattered pages, endless family trees, and unanswered questions.
That frustration sparked a new idea: a user-friendly app that would capture family history clutter and transform it into shareable life stories to be kept digitally and passed down as an heirloom book. Unable to do this with existing products, they set out to build it themselves.
Keepsake offers a platform to capture a ‘box of memories’ – records, photographs, recipes, letters, memories – about each ancestor and then helps shape that material into an engaging biography using a bespoke “story engine”, with the user’s editorial touch throughout. The result is a tactile collection of ancestor profiles that can be kept, shared and handed down.
“Stories are a very human way of making sense of our past – and who we are today”, says Sarah. “We want to make storytelling accessible to as many people as possible – and family history is a great way to do that. Everyone has an ancestor story – a migration, a recipe, a photograph – that they can capture and preserve for future generations. Keepsake makes it easy and fun to engage with these stories and produce something lasting. We like to think of it as the family history project you’ll actually finish!”
Sam and Sarah met while studying on the prestigious Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia (where they secured startup funding to build the app) and now live in Wiltshire with their two daughters. They’re combining their writing with professional experience, too.
“My background is in Defence IT project management,” Sam says, “so we’re building the app with security and data privacy at its core. Sarah’s experience in communications is integral to our goal of building a brand that families will love.”
Now they’re looking for local people to help shape the next stage. The workshop is best suited to anyone who has already started researching at least one ancestor – even if it’s just a few names, photos, or a half-finished folder. The more you bring, the richer your ancestor profile will be.
To take part, attendees are asked to bring:
• a “box of memories” about one ancestor (photos, documents, letters, recipes, recorded interviews – whatever you have)
• a laptop, tablet or mobile phone
• and the stories you want to capture forever
Sam and Sarah will be on hand throughout to guide participants through the process. By the end of the session, you’ll have the beginnings of a shareable ancestor profile – and the chance to give feedback that will directly influence how Keepsake develops.
“There’s a real creative buzz in Trowbridge,” Sarah adds, “especially with The Old Town Hall reopening and the growth of the local creative network. We’d love people to come along, see what we’ve built, and help us make it better.”
Find out more at www.keepsakefamilyhistory.com or email hello@keepsakefamilyhistory.com
by Sarah Savelli