History Day

Items

• Churchill Archives Centre History Day 2021 podcast: the urban environment
  In this special History Day 2021 podcast, we delve into our social science collections here at Churchill Archives Centre to explore what they can tell us about the urban environment in 1950s London.
• Imperial designs: technology and empire in the 19th century
  This exhibition covers the period when Britain experienced the peak of her imperial and industrial power. In the years 1815 to 1870 she was undoubtedly the ‘workshop of the world’, and there was no rival posing both a military and an economic threat.
• In the Footsteps of Exiles
  This online exhibition has been curated as a virtual history walk around the University of London's Bloomsbury campus, based on a series of guided walks carried out by staff of Senate House Library. The exhibition can also be used as the basis for a self-guided walk.
• In the Veins
  ‘In the Veins’ resonates through time, using over a century of archive footage to shine a light onto the face of the mining heritage of Yorkshire and the North East of England. A story of hardship and hope, division and defiance, perseverance and pride; this is not a history lesson, it’s an emotional journey that digs deep into the heart of a community built on coal. Commissioned by Teesside University and produced by the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive, the film is the result of mining for archive ‘black gold’ in amateur and professional films, promotional footage and regional BBC and ITV television programming and news, totaling over 115 source films, then carefully crafting a respectful production that would represent a proud and often forgotten community. Released in 2024 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the end of the 1984/85 UK year-long coal mining strikes, the 24-minute film has been screened at film festivals, in regional libraries, museums and published on YouTube. Importantly, it has been screened in community centres and village halls in former mining communities across the North of England, many of which are still feeling the effects of the end of the mining industry. Telling the story of the coal industry, but significantly the human experience, through only archive footage and found voices in the vaults of the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive, was a massive undertaking. The 13-strong volunteer ‘community curator’ group who have lived and worked in mining communities, at the coalface, in the community, were central to ensure the film was meaningful and authentic.
• Remembering the East London Gay Community
  The East London Gay Community supported one another and made sure to have a lot of fun! Regular activities ranged from a helpline and coffee evenings to discos and fundraisers. Founded in 1978, the ELGC ran regular events like these for over three decades. Newham Heritage Centre has a significant collection of their newsletters, as revealed in this blog by Heritage Officer, Cas Bradbeer.
• Sanitary Ramblings in Bethnal Green by Hector Gavin, 1848
  Sanitary Ramblings is a graphic description of the dreadful living conditions for many of the residents of Bethnal Green in 1848, written by Hector Gavin (1815 – 1855), a Scottish physician. Gavin details the environments people lived in, street by street and how these situations are reflected in their health and mortality.
• Stories from Lincoln’s Inn Fields: The Flower Family
  This blog is a short story of the influential Flowers and their strong connection to the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
• The role of art and design in the Doncaster Rovers Football Museum
  DRFC will celebrate its 150th anniversary in September 2029. We are building a museum collection that chronicles that history. For many years there are gaps in the collection and we know it is likely there will always be very few 'real' physical artefacts to fill them. So we need reproductions and artworks to bring our history to life and share it with our communities. We also want our audience to get involved as artists, crafters and makers themselves. We are starting from close to zero for large chunks of our history, so almost anything which represents those periods of our timeline is valuable at this point. The process also helps spread our message online and in our mobile museum exhibitions. One day we hope to include a gallery in a permanent exhibition space alongside the museum exhibits. For now we will continue to include DRFC-related art as a ‘thing’ in our temporary exhibitions and online.