Our blogging and social media prompts have been designed with our members in mind, but anyone can take part – even if they don’t have a formal one-place study (see One-place study blogging prompts 2021 – everyone’s invited!). The prompts are a series of monthly themes or topics for one-place study activities. Those activities can be any or all of the following:
You are free to use any or all of these prompts – you might look at the topics and see that you can do something for January, March, April and June but not for February or May, for example. We hope that this approach will be flexible enough to give everyone an opportunity to take part, whatever the nature of your Place, your favourite areas of research, or the amount of time you have available.
Articles on the topics written by members for Destinations can be sent to the editor at any time for publication, but where possible please post related blog and social media posts during the relevant months.
Hopefully you will find at least one topic which will spark your interest and prompt you to participate. If not, we have more to come – Hopefully you will find lots of topics which will spark your interest and prompt you to participate. You can of course put forward suggestions for any that you would like to see included.
You have almost certainly seen examples of ‘then and now’ comparisons, usually in the form of photos showing scenes as they were and as they are in modern times. With this prompt we challenge you to come up with something similar, using photos, or perhaps maps, or other means (including narrative descriptions), illustrating how your place, or parts of it, has or have changed over the years. You could also, given that this this is the month of Christmas, look at how Yuletide festivities in your place have evolved.
Social media hashtag: #OnePlaceThenAndNow
For this prompt you could consider technology and technological advancements in your OPS place (in connection with agriculture, crafts, industry or transport for example), or technology used in carrying out your OPS. What were or are the benefits and the pitfalls of the tech in question? Were any of your place’s people known to be ‘early adopters’ or sticklers for traditional ways of doing things?
Have you discovered any scandals in your one-place study research, examples of improper behaviour which would have set tongues wagging in the local pub or streets, or lead to disparaging remarks in the church? Who were the people at the heart of these scandals, and what were their stories? Potential sources include parish registers, local newspapers, oral history, and local histories. We look forward to being scandalised!
Social media hashtag: #OnePlaceScandals
Previous prompts have focused on baptisms and weddings in our one-place studies, now it is the turn of burials. Have you found any particularly interesting burials or funeral services recorded in your place’s parish registers, or reported on in the local papers? Has analysis of burial records in your place revealed patterns, trends or anomalies? This is the month in which to share your discoveries!
Labourers are a frequent feature in family trees and one-place studies alike. This prompt is timed to coincide with the Society of Genealogists’ event “Harvesting History: Agricultural Labourers in Life and Records,” on August 22nd but you are welcome to look into labourers of all kinds. Who were the labourers of your OPS place, what were their daily lives like, and how did those lives change with the seasons and over time?
Social media hashtag: #OnePlaceLabourers
A prompt which you could interpret in a variety of ways! Were any of your place’s people reported missing? Have you got any frustrating cases of OPS residents who were missing from a census or from other records (or indeed any records which have themselves vanished)? Whose voices or stories are missing from the historical record, by accident or design? Don’t miss this opportunity to post or blog about them.
Carers Week takes place in June in the UK. While that event seeks to raise awareness of the vital role of (and challenges faced by) unpaid carers, our prompt invites you to look at carers of all kinds in your one-place studies. Whether paid or unpaid, whether working in homes or institutions, and whether caring for young, elderly or infirm people – who provided care for people who needed it in you place, and who from your place provided
such care elsewhere?
Social media hashtag: #OnePlaceCarers
Most of the people recorded in the censuses, parish registers and other records relating our OPS places were residents – but some were sojourners or visitors, passing through or calling on business, travelling folk or other itinerants, holidaymakers or other short-term guests. Who were they, where were they from, and what were the reasons for theirvisits? Have you found anyone recorded as a visitor more than once, visitors who became residents, or residents who moved away but later returned briefly to see family or friends?
Social media hashtag: #OnePlaceVisitors
Inspired by the presentations on social networks given by Joe Saunders at our conference in 2024 and our August 2025 webinar (recordings of which can be accessed through the Members’ Area of our website), we’re making networks our OPS prompt for February 2026. One-place studies reveal a multitude of social networks involving the people of our places, highlighting a variety of familial, financial, business, charitable, religious, recreational and other relationships. Blog / social media posts and short videos on all kinds of networks will be welcome.
Social media hashtag: #OnePlaceNetworks
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