Help us to unlock 750,000 priceless Express & Star pictures of the past

The newspaper, with the support of the University of Wolverhampton and WAVE: The Museums, Galleries and Archives of Wolverhampton, is submitting a lottery bid which would allow its entire photographic archive, dating back to the time it was founded in 1874, to be made available to the public on an internet site where people can view the pictures free of charge.

The vast collection, at the moment in storage at the Express & Star head office in Wolverhampton, includes photographs of streets ravaged by bombs during the Second World War, royal visits to the Black Country, and countless smaller events from our region's history.

Find out how to get involved with the photo archive project here

Landmark occasions, such as King George VI's visit to Dudley and Winston Churchill addressing crowds at Molineux, have all been captured on film. Black civil rights leader Malcolm X is pictured walking through Smethwick.

But the success of the Heritage Lottery Fund bid, will depend on support from the general public – and that is where readers come in. We need as many people as possible to write letters explaining the importance of the database as a social history resource.

Historian and broadcaster Professor Carl Chinn and chairman of Wolverhampton Civic and Historical Society Suhail Rana are among the first to pledge their support to our campaign, saying the collection is a huge part of our social history which deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

"Without doubt it is one of the most important collections of regional photographs in England," said Professor Chinn, community historian at Birmingham University. "It is a priceless collection."

Associate Dean at the University of Wolverhampton, Patricia Cooper, added: "It is vital that we preserve this collection to conserve the Black Country's diverse heritage for present and future generations to experience and enjoy. Without digitisation the archive will progressively deteriorate and we will be at risk of losing a valuable resource with all the memories and stories from our personal histories which it holds.

"On a personal level I am really passionate about the project, and as a Black Country local, the thought that this archive could be lost is insurmountable to me."

The value of the Express & Star archives in Queen Street was highlighted by Rhonda Evans, who is producing a series of educational programmes about social history for the BBC's Learning Zone. One of the programmes will see Mitchell Lever, aged 15, from Wordsley, looking through the Express & Star files for part of a project on the history of the Mod culture which swept through Britain during the 1960s.

"I think they are invaluable for ordinary people looking back into their own history, and the social direction that Britain was going through at that time. If it could be freely available on the internet, where everybody could have access to it, that would be brilliant.

"It would allow people to look back at how society has changed, at the differences people would not necessarily have noticed at the time."

Mitchell, a pupil at The Kingswinford School, said he found his trawl through the Express & Star's archives to be a fascinating experience, and said it would be a wonderful resource if people could freely search through the pictures over the internet. "The archive here is amazing," he says.

"It makes it more real to you. My dad will say how things about how it was different in the 60s, but when you see it here it brings it home. It's been a real learning curve for me. If I could search for it online, that would be fantastic. I could spend hours looking through it."

Express & Star brand and communications manager Chris Leggett said many of the oldest photographs were at risk of being lost forever if they were not stored in digital format.

"Many of these photographs are very old and are deteriorating, if something is not done they will be lost forever," he said.

"It is a huge task, which involves scanning every single old photograph and uploading the captions that go with them into a digital archive that can be searched online, free of charge, by the general public."

Visit www.expressandstar.com/photo-bid and follow the bid on Twitter at: @ESPhotoArchive