Dig Where You Stand movement

The Dig Where You Stand movement is an international public history and adult education movement promoting public participation in research local history, especially labor history. It began in Sweden in the 1970s and was given its shape by Sven Lindqvist in his book Gräv där du står (1978). Following the movement's success in Sweden, it was taken up in other Western countries.

Sweden

The movement took its name and its founding spirit from Lindqvist's book Gräv där du står (Dig where you stand), published in 1978. In his emphasis on workers' researching their own history Lindqvist drew inspiration from Maxim Gorky, from public history campaigns in post-revolutionary China (where he studied for a year during the Great Leap Forward), from Kenneth Hudson's books and television shows on industrial archaeology in the 1960s, and from the British oral history movement. The motto was drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche: Wo du stehst, grab tief hinein! (Where you stand, dig deep!) The movement was the culmination of a variety of developments in Swedish cultural life in the 1970s such as the revival of documentarist fiction and the Bygd i förvandling ("Community in Change") local history campaign. The latter worked through books and a television series and built on the strong Swedish tradition of study circles by emphasising the training of study circle leaders. A successful trial in two regions in 1973 resulted in the creation of 700 study circles with 90,000 participants, and the program was extended across the country. It brought a large amount of oral and written reminiscences, photographs and documents to local museums and archives.