We invited Nick Pell from the Snibston Museum to visit the students, and asked him to bring along some items related to the everyday lives of miners in the area. We wanted to give students some idea of how local lives had changed with the closing of the mines, and how these objects were now of historical rather than everyday importance.
He showed the students items such as Miners tallies, and snap tins which were used every day, and also talked about the importance in the Miners lives of the local Welfare clubs and societies. This gave students a much clearer understanding of the parochial nature of most peoples’ lives in the area in the earlier parts of the last century where your life was based around the mine and the village where you were born and brought up.
Most of our students involved in this project are not from local families, so this was useful to give them a better understanding of the impact of the mines on the local area.
The students were then asked to make a 15 minute sketch of one of the items that had interested them, and the results are included in the photos. |
