Heritage Partnership to Document Tees Valley's Industrial History

Description

The changing nature of the Tees Valleys industrial heritage is to be documented and promoted thanks to a new partnership between Teesside University and a local museum.

Subject

The University is working with Kirkleatham Museum on the partnership entitled Landscape of Rapid Change which has been developed in response to the recent closure of the SSI (UK) steelworks at Redcar.

The project will begin with an oral history project, called Steel Stories, which will safeguard the oral memories of the steel industry and capture the reaction to the closure of the Redcar plant and the subsequent contraction of the sector.

These memories will help inform a year-long exhibition, developed by the partnership and hosted at Kirkleatham Museum, from the summer of 2017 to represent the global and local significance of the iron and steel industry.

The project is being led on behalf of the University by Professor Natasha Vall, Associate Dean, Research and Innovation, in the School of Arts & Media, and Dr Joan Heggie, Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Business & Law and the formerly the project manager of the British Steel Archive project.

From September, the academics will work with students, museum staff and members of the public to draft the framework for the oral history project and begin interviewing subjects.

Professor Vall said: This is a fantastic opportunity for collaboration. The University will be able to offer strong support to the museum while, at the same time, enhancing our own student learning experience with the opportunity to work on a live project.

As a member of the Heritage Consortium we have doctoral students who are doing PhDs in industrial heritage and are trained in the exact area that Kirkleatham Museum is looking for support.

Eventually, we want to be able to create a public history resource that will be available for future researchers.

Dr Heggie added: We want to hear from right across the community and try to remove the tendency to focus purely on the workers at the plant.

While it is obviously rooted in the story of the workers, there are many people who were affected by the closure who didnt necessarily work there and we want to speak to those people as well.

Its important that we do this now, while memories are still fresh.