What is CLUTCH?

CLUTCH was conceived as a project funded by the Millennium Commission and embodied a concept designed to improve parents' computer literacy understanding through their involvement in community history research. This ground-breaking project, managed jointly by The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute and The Living Archive, used themes of community history to engage parents in acquiring basic IT skills at their children's schools. The underlying "IT with a purpose" concept underpins other applications of this approach, such as the CABER CLUTCH project.

Who funded the CLUTCH Clubs?

The CLUTCH Clubs were a 3-year lottery funded Millennium Award Scheme supported by the Millennium Commission. Visit the Millennium Awards web site at: http://www.starpeople.org.uk

What were the aims of the Clubs?

To enable parents to understand and use the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) skills that their children are using at school. To produce a historical resource on the web for their local community to share.

Who were the web sites created by?

315 parents worked together in groups over 7 months to carry out a CLUTCH project at 60 primary schools within a 30 mile radius of Milton keynes.

Once they had chosen their topic, the parents received training in how to carry out research and how to conduct taped interviews.

Having gathered lots of photographs, documents and stories, they received training in the latest Information and Communication Technologies to enable them to put these stories onto the web.

Who ran the CLUTCH Clubs?

The CLUTCH Clubs were run by Award Partners:

The Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University http://kmi.open.ac.uk

The Living Archive http://www.livingarchive.org.uk