Lots of us would like to know more about our own families: how did your mum and dad meet if they were born in different countries, which country did your mum's mum live in before she came to England, where exactly is the place your dad was  born?  And what about our friends and their families?  All those things we've never got around to asking our grandparents - maybe this is a good time to get started!

And if you offer a local service, do you sometimes wonder (or even have to find out) what the demographic profile of users of your service is?  Maybe this could be a way of making it more fun than just filling in the official forms you sometimes get!

The Where in the World? Heritage Chart is a simple way of starting to answer some of our questions about ourselves.  The idea is that a group of people get together to do the project - it could be a class at school or an older person's club, any group could do it. After all, one thing we all have in common is that we were all born somewhere! 

Each person finds out where they, their parents and their grandparents (so that is seven people in each family) were born.  Often the best way of finding out is to check with somebody else in your family.   Then we use bright colours to make a Heritage Chart that looks like this and this.  And suddenly people discover all sorts of surprises, facts and coincidences about themselves and each other.  Using the electronic picture that you make, it is a brilliant learning and exploring tool for schools in history, geography and ICT classes, we can see how people moved around the world at different times - and sometimes guess why that happened.  It is fun to do whatever your age.  And everyone gets to know each other a bit better than before.  You can find out a little more, and do a quiz, in issue 20.

To take part in the TimeLine project it is important that the every chart is made up in the same way, using the same colours and information.  We use special ways of looking at the information - it's all so clear that, well, it's child's play!  We are hoping to link up all the charts to make a mirror of the wonderful worlds we all live in.  If you would like to take part, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it