A hair-raising discovery

It turns out that the Flickr account is owned by Hairswap - a part of the exhibition HAIR: Community Stories from Birmingham that is currently running at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

The free exhibition (which runs until March 2009), looks at personal stories in Birmingham spanning the past fifty years.

Hairswap is the interactive part.

For me, as someone fascinated by the research and documentary nature of the Internet, this is a fantastic social resource providing a snapshot of Birmigham citizens during a specific period of time.

Granted, the main subjects might look a bit silly, but collectively they, and the people that feature in the pictures with them, start to tell a story about us - the residents of Birmingham.

I'd be interested to know if these participants knew they were taking part in something that would become a permanant, public record on the web.