The Mass Observation Archive is one of our favourite British institutions.

Based in Falmer in East Sussex and active since 1937, it is a national archive of records of “everyday life, thought and feeling in Britain”. That’s writing, photographs, drawings, some oral history materials and ephemera (tickets, menus, postcards and the like), all capturing ordinary life as lived by ordinary Brits for the past 90 years.


Each year on 12 May, the staff run the Diary Project, an annual national initiative that invites people across the UK to document their everyday lives – thoughts, feelings and activities – on (you guessed) 12 May.

The project was launched in 1937 to record everyday life on the day of King George VI’s coronation, and revived in 2010 to study how British lives change over time. You can see various past examples on this page.

The submissions are held in the archive forever, so it’s quite an incredible thing. The diaries have become a unique and valuable national resource for researchers, sociologists and historians studying British life.

This year The Bee is honoured to be working with the Mass Observation Archive team, encouraging our readers and writers to submit their 12 May diaries. We’re proud and pleased to be promoting working-class people’s representation in the project.

You can find a full guide to submitting work here: https://massobs.org.uk/12th-may/ but a quick summary is that:

  • Anyone can take part
  • Participants (often called “Mass Observers”) record a full day’s activities from waking to sleeping.
  • Diaries can be written, typed, or submitted as photos, drawings or collages.
  • Submissions require a brief self-portrait (age, location, job, relationship status) and a signed consent statement for the archive.

If in doubt, you can surely find inspiration from some of the previous diaries on this page, whether you’re looking after kittens, being an emo, obsessing over your Xbox or working your arse off as per.

Information about consent, copyright and data protection can be found on the linked page.