Photographic archive is essential to giving the people of the West Midlands a voice

I have written a weekly 'Black Country Memories' feature for the Express and Star for over ten years and on many occasions during that period I have sourced historical photos in the newspaper's library.

My familiarity with the collection leads me to state that without doubt it is one of the most important collections of regional photographs in England.

In my role as Professor of Community History at the University of Birmingham, I have come to realise how vital photographs are both as a historical source and record. Too often photographs have been used by historians merely for illustrative purposes but slowly and surely some social historians are beginning to realise their worth and their richness.

Indeed it is now hard to imagine family history, housing history, street history, neighbourhood history, manufacturing history, workplace history, shopping history, day-to-day history, political history community history, and ethnic minority history without the relevant photographs. Yet they too have been a silent narrative to all these histories because of their highly limited accessibility. Digitisation of the Express & Star collection will give a voice to those histories.

It will allow the people within photographs from Wolverhampton, the Black Country, South Staffordshire, Cannock Chase and elsewhere to reach out to those who study them and relate to them.

It will be as vital in giving a voice those who recognise themselves, their relatives, their neighbours, and their places.

The Express & Star collection is essential to an understanding of the mentalité, the thought processes, values, and beliefs shared by the folk of the West Midlands.

And crucially, photographs are a more democratic and inclusive source that help give a voice to those excluded from traditional histories.

My own research has focused very much on day-to-day life and on the lives of working-class men, women and children and ethnic minorities - people who too often have been hidden from history. Photographs from the Express & Star collection and from readers have been invaluable as sources for my articles and for the Black Country Memories books published by the newspaper.

As a social historian I have learned much from them and I know that across the region the grant to bring forward the digitisation of the collection will be greeted joyously by local, family, social and ethnic minority historians, by teachers, by community groups, by community activists, and by community performers.