Invisible Histories - Salford oral history project

Archive
XML

Scope and Content

Invisible Histories was the Library's first oral history project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It ran from summer 2012 until early 2014.

The aim of the project was to capture a flavour of people's working lives during the period when Salford was a major industrial powerhouse in the North West – evidence for which is now almost completely gone.

The project focused on interviewing people who worked at three representative Salford workplaces:

  • Agecroft Colliery
  • Ward and Goldstone (an engineering firm)
  • Richard Haworth's cotton mill
The Library was also very aware of the need not just to record these interviews, but to find ways to bring them to a wider audience. Inspired by Ewan's MacColl's innovative 1950s Radio Ballads, one of the ways we kept these memories alive was through working with students from Buile Hill Visual Arts College to produce a modern version of a Radio Ballad, using extracts from our interviews.

This is the project website. The full interviews and the Radio Ballad are available to listen to on the site. There are also summaries of the interviews (and in a few cases transcriptions), photographs and background information about the three workplaces.

Note

This is a description of an online resource . Online Resources are websites that describe, interpret and provide access to archives. They often provide access to digital content but they may also describe physical materials. They usually cover a theme or topic, such as an individual, a movement, or an important historical event.

Other Finding Aids

Access this resource online: https://invisiblehistoriesproject.wordpress.com/

Related Material

The library hold a collection of material related to Ward and Goldstone and its successor company, Volex (Ref: ORG/VOLEX)