It’s been a while since my last update - with the Easter holidays and moving my principal home to Glasgow, this has been my first full week back from leave. By far the highlight of my holiday was having the opportunity to visit Amgueddfa Cymru’s Big Pit National Coal Mining Museum in Blaenavon. We were initially disappointed that the main attraction - going down the 300ft shaft in a tour of the mine - was temporarily closed due to inclement weather. But I got a call one morning to say that they had re-opened, and it did not disappoint. Phones are prohibited in the mine itself, but here is a picture from before we went down: of me looking, as my cousin put it, ‘like an NCB inspector’:
But back to some actual CE updates! Below I am going to focus mainly on updates about the Bradford events that I am involved in, as well as the environmental ethics work.
We now have a provisional schedule in place for this event, which will bring together members of Bradford City Council, Friends of Bradford’s Becks, and other local partners in a mapping exercise focussed around locating millponds and river courses in the Bradford area.
Daniel has been doing some excellent work using the online mapping platform Felt, and the plan is to work in groups, with each group adding features to individual maps from different periods, and focussing on particular areas of the maps. By the end of the workshop, we should hopefully have a rich dataset which will not only be of use to several of our investigations, but will also be a valuable resource to our partners.
The contrast between the city plans of Bradford for 1848 and 1889/91 are especially interesting. In the former, Bradford Beck is only culverted for a relatively short section in the centre of the city, while Bowling Beck is underground for much longer. Nevertheless, there’s a brief section of Bowling Beck which seems to have remained unculverted even as late as the 1890s, just beside Bridge Street Goods Station:
Why was this section not culverted? And what did it actually look like at the time? I have tried briefly to find contemporary images of this section, to no avail so far, but it offers a brief glimpse of how tracing these watercourses can uncover some unexpected pockets that are worth further investigation.
Tasha and I had a productive conversation with Tony Carruthers at BIM about plans for this event, as well as with Irene Lofthouse and Jo Crampton of Friends of Bradford’s Becks. We now have in place a draft schedule which Tony is going to share with the events team at BIM on Monday, but we have provisionally scheduled for it to take place 11 am-2 pm on Saturday, May 25th. We are planning a range of events, including a ‘memory board’ activity around the history of Fagley Beck, a demonstration of local river bugs, and a CE presentation by Tasha and I of our work so far on river pollution. Several of these activities will be available throughout the day for visitors to engage in, and Tony also suggested that BIM’s family team may want to suggest something. I’m keen also to look a little bit into any links between scouting and the becks, since the BIM currently have an exhibition on the topic. Tasha and I have also been discussing ways of incorporating Memory Mapper into the mix, following Duncan’s very interesting presentation on Monday. More to follow soon!
Plans are also progressing for the screening of Once Upon a Sheep, which is also planned to take place at BIM on the afternoon of the 25th. This will not be in the main galleries, but in a room with screening facilities at the museum, and will probably be a sign-up event. The plan is to show each of the three reels of the film separately, with a live running narration provided by a different person for each reel. We now have three people in place to provide this narration - the intention being to draw people’s attention to particular aspects of the film that we might benefit from knowing more about. Judith Simpson will be there to film individual attendees talking about the film (and discussions etc), and someone will provide a brief intro too. There have been lots of ideas circulating about how to reach a good audience for the event - including for instance the University of the Third Age - but the key thing now will be making sure that news of the event reaches as many people as possible.
I mentioned this already in one of our meetings, but in searching for a sound version of Once Upon A Sheep, I found a reference to the film in the online catalogue of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. After I contacted the archive, they responded to say that they do have a copy of the film in their collection, and that it is indeed a sound version. Although the film is in very poor condition, they have added it to their digital preservation queue. This is very exciting! Not only will it be fascinating for the Movie Makers, but its existence in the Australian archive also speaks to the global reach of the Bradford wool market - and of course information about it.
Environmental Ethics
Anna-Maria, Tasha, and I had a very productive catch-up this week about our plans for reflecting on CE’s energy use and working practices with regards to environmental ethics. I have updated the Responsible Research and Ethics section on notion referring to this aspect of our work, but the key takeaways are: