Cotton Threads: Bury's Industrial Link to Slavery
Organisation: Bury Archives Service
Grant Award: Your Heritage Grant (£49,800)
Linked to the celebrated bi-centenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007 this project had a number of broad audience development aims that would be achieved using a collection of local family papers - the Hutchinson family of Bury, cotton manufacturers c. 1848:
- Develop and deliver education resources for Key Stage 2 and Key stage 3
- Create online catalogues and interactive website (and museum touch screen), with catalogues on A2A
- Touring exhibition to visit local branch libraries
Outcomes
Opportunities took the project beyond its initial aims. A 14 week full scale Cotton Threads exhibition of archives documents, supported by museum and art gallery paintings at Bury Art Gallery was visited by 9,000 members of the public. This was a great opportunity for archives staff to learn from the gallery team and took a great deal of time to organise. Putting the exhibition together helped us to storyboard the interactive website and touch screen content. This went live in December 2007 and has proved to be a popular aspect of the museum, making the archives service much more visible. At the same time the online catalogue went live, which contains multi-level descriptions of all our catalogues, making our service much more accessible to remote users.
Volunteers have been involved in all aspects of the project; performing at events, transcribing documents and cataloguing onto CALM. Most notably, we had teacher volunteer time on the project which enabled the creation of our Key Stage 3 resource pack, downloadable from the website. This pack has been piloted in a number of local high schools, has been rated as a good lesson in an ofsted inspection at one school and is being incorporated into the syllabus at some local schools for the new academic year. A big factor in this reception for the pack has been the fact that it has been designed with the new September 2008 curriculum in mind and therefore, takes some of the load from teachers having to think of a new approach to lessons.
This project has taken us in unexpected directions and other new projects are seamlessly emerging from it - such as our adult learners course Forgotten Flavours, Victorian cookery inspired by recipes in the Hutchinson family papers. These new opportunities only spur us on to think of other ways we can reach new audiences by using our unique resources.
For more details on the project go to the Cotton Threads website www.cotton-threads.org.uk
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