Derbyshire Record Office is working with Animate Projects on an 18-month creative heritage project exploring historic working lives across Derbyshire and the East Midlands.
WORK Records brings together artists, historians, curators, volunteers and workers to explore historic working lives through archives.
The project will explore the holdings of three heritage collections – Derbyshire County Council’s Record Office, Corby Heritage Centre and John Smedley Archive – and discover what they can tell us about working lives at three family firms: John Smedley at Lea Mills, packaging firm Robinson and Sons in Chesterfield, and steel manufacturer Stewarts & Lloyds Ltd in Corby.
Artists will make short films that animate these important, untold stories of the significance, ideas, realities, and contemporary resonance of regional family firms, bringing heritage stories to life in an accessible and engaging way.
The films will be the catalyst for live and online events connecting contemporary workers and families with their historic counterparts. An online resource will document the project and host discoveries, increasing access to the collections, demonstrating the importance of heritage and how it resonates with how we live today.
Alongside the archive collections, Animate is working with arts organisations Junction Arts in Chesterfield and Fermynwoods Contemporary Art in Northamptonshire, the history team at the University of Derby and Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
Derby-based Animate Projects has been awarded a £147,170 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver WORK Records.
Derbyshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Health and Communities Councillor Dawn Abbott said: “This wonderful project will bring working history to life for a modern audience. It will be fascinating to see how discoveries made about working in the past will speak to the people of today.”
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