The Bureau of small regrets

The Bureau of Small Regrets, and its sister organisation The Office for Ordinary Loss, are departments within the larger Institute of Memory.  

The remit of the Bureau of Small Regrets is two-fold. Firstly, we offer space in which to share your minor regret. For many people these regrets, perhaps a small scale unfulfilled ambition or something left unsaid, remain largely unacknowledged. Minor ambitions are oftentimes postponed, until it becomes apparent that the ambition will not be realisable. We understand that the sharing process can work as a surrogate to the actual activity and can promote a sense of completeness and closure.

Secondly, we maintain a repository of these stories. The regret is recorded and enters our archive of oral histories that have in common the theme of ‘regret’, making concrete something that was previously only abstract and, in the process, allowing a glimpse of what might have been to slide into view. The Bureau looks at the patterns surfaced through this documentation; the ways in which minor regrets are replicated by people across generations and geographies.

© Susan Ressler

We are a team of archivists and administrators trained in conducting oral history interviews. We operate an interview space in London, and a schedule of pop-up spaces across the UK and internationally. We invite you to interview at a mutually convenient time and location.

We record the interview digitally, and store it in our archive, following all relevant GDPR protocols. With permission we also take a photograph of you, to connect your image with your story.

© Susan Ressler