In 2002 and 2003 SAPPHIRE was awarded funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Pilgrim Trust towards its initiative 'Bringing the Page to Life: Papermaking on the Water of Leith. During the course of the two year project researchers interviewed former employees of the papermaking industry that had flourished along the Water of Leith area on the outskirts of Edinburgh.The material gathered provides valuable insights into the relationship between the papermaking industry and the communities built around it.
Bringing the Page to Life was the first sustained and focused attempt to record the oral and social history of the Scottish papermaking industry, itself a major employer in a number of districts in Scotland. It will focus on the Water of Leith, which around Edinburgh was an important centre for papermaking, having a number of mills. By recording the history of this industry, the project has created a significant archive chronicling important aspects of twentieth-century Scottish industrial history.
Among the public and published outcomes have been an exhibition on the history of the papermaking industry at the Water of Leith Visitor Centre in 2004, several journal articles and an edited volume of oral reminiscences published by the Birlin Press in 2006.
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