Communities affected by the ongoing regeneration of North Staffordshire are being invited to share their experiences and memories in an online project.

The People’s Archive website aims to preserve photographic and personal accounts of regeneration for current and future generations to study.

The internet archive is being funded by housing regeneration agency RENEW North Staffordshire and compiled by The Sentinel.

The site, which was officially launched on November 26, already offers more than 1,000 photographs and dozens of eyewitness accounts detailing RENEW’s activities across the area over the past seven years.

Along with pictures of now-demolished streets, viewers can find video interviews with residents of all ages caught up in the changes, as well as detailed explanations from key regeneration officers of the aims and impact of individual improvement schemes.

Contributors include pupils at St Luke’s C of E Primary School, in Wellington Road, Hanley, who have spoken about their involvement in planning improvements which Renew is carrying out in the area.

RENEW chairman Peter Bounds told yesterday’s launch event at the school that the website would help residents understand the reasons behind the dramatic changes.

He said: “We are spending hundreds of millions of pounds transforming communities, but it’s the people who live in them that we are concerned about improving life for.

“We have teamed up with The Sentinel to launch the People’s Archive to show how people’s lives have changed for the better.”

He added: “This is a cutting-edge innovation that has never been tried before and I’m very excited to be launching such an important resource.”

RENEW’s programme manager, Nick Newman, said: “We wanted to show the changes that are happening and make that information more readily available.

“But we also want people to compile their own videos about their lives and memories to share with other people.

“We are hoping that the website will develop and become a community resource for the whole of North Staffordshire.”

The Sentinel’s head of community contacts, Martin Tideswell, said: “We will keep updating the site and uploading photographs and stories, but we need people to log on and start to use it so that the ownership of the archive transfers from ourselves to the people in the communities.”

Burslem-based historian and Sentinel columnist Fred Hughes has already contributed to the archive.

He said: “The great thing about this project is that everybody can take part in it.

“It represents an acknowledgement of our past and a recognition of where we want to take our communities in the future.”

Peter Cotton, aged 73, has used the website to relate his experiences of the regeneration of Knutton.

He said: “Knutton used to have a real stigma attached to it for unemployment, crime and other problems, but regeneration has changed all that.

“We have seen new facilities being built and an influx of new people coming to live in the village.

“It is great to see the new opportunities that regeneration has brought us.”

Northwood resident Barry Elks, aged 52, of Dyke Street, who sits on the area’s Renew steering group, also appears on the archive site.

He said: “I am concerned when I see houses being knocked down, but I’m encouraged by changes happening in the area.

“This project gives people an opportunity to see what has happened in other areas.”