Present:
Apologies:
This investigation meeting is designed to help us start thinking about the potential collaborations coming out of the being started by Alex F. We want to share some of the initial outcomes of conversations, as well as the material some people have shared with us. We are not necessarily looking to develop investigations in the meeting, but begin conversation and get a sense of who might be interested in starting to be involved in further conversations.
Agenda:
Undercliffe Cemetery
Developing a trail of the cemetery, and interested in searching across collections for relevant photos and making links to materials for use on their interpretation boards and website.
Happy to share data from their own research and digitisation work happening in relation to cemetery records.
Doing digitisation of cemetery records - some of which are handwritten, others typed. Interested in whether there is anything to be done to help speed the process up.
Examples of the themes and of the types of material they are working with to digitise can be found here - Undercliffe Cemetery Trail
Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions
Currently transcribing and tagging their collected oral histories - there is some interest in seeing if applying our approach to using Whisper and topic-modelling to support this work.
Interested in further mapping work - we could potentially look at mapping their collected oral histories onto mill locations. Can also look at connections between museum collections and the oral histories as well.
There is also appetite for arranging in-person events in bradford that focus on the textiles industry.
Bradford Movie Makers
Have a film in their collection called Once Upon a Sheep (1949) filmed inside one of Bradford’s mills - not properly digitised yet, potential to see if we can support this as well create an annotated copy as well. In the process of trying to obtain a copy of the film to further examine.
They have also shared with us a spreadsheet of films that they currently hold which can be viewed here - Bradford Move Makers Film Archiving Group
Tim Smith’s photo archive
How can personal and professional archives by non-institutions also contribute to a national collection social machine? Tim has a FileMaker Pro database alongside physical ledgers that document his commissions and creative works over his career as a photographer. Looking at getting an export in csv or as an xls file so we can see what the data.
Virtual Bradford
Digital Twin has been developed for Bradford and there is scope for ongoing collaboration with the Geospatial mapping cluster that is emerging.
Daily Herald Archives (at NSMM)
Interesting material related to Bradford (not huge quantities on an initial inspection) that could play into other investigations and Bradford collaborations. Details can be found in Alex F’s diary entry here - [On Tuesday, I spent my afternoon once again knee-deep in the Daily Herald Archive looking for Bradford-related materials. Unfortunately, there isn’t as much as we would have liked - at least in the main Bradford box (you can view details regarding the objects from this box here). It is likely that there are other Bradford-related images in the Archive, but this would require a very targeted approach - for example, having a particular event or named person in mind would allow us to look for images relating to this (remember, the Daily Herald Archive was a working photojournalism archive, so you’re mainly looking at newsworthy stories!). I’m happy to have further conversations with anyone who may find that approach useful in their work.](https://www.notion.so/On-Tuesday-I-spent-my-afternoon-once-again-knee-deep-in-the-Daily-Herald-Archive-looking-for-Bradfo-bb5377686dfb426082a9fc1445fe836a)
Summat Creative
Happy to share the research packet generated as part of their Special Histories of Bradford project as well as access to digitised versions of artwork created by participants in response to the research - could potentially look into how both can be further connected to collections
Claire Wellesley-Smith
Interest in seeing if we can digitise/photograph some of the artwork created from her previous heritage projects and look into how we many connect them to collections (an example can be seen here https://wornstoriesbradfordblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/pop-up-exhibition/ - the names of textile workers are stitched into the artwork, which could be further linked to related data/collections?)
There may also be other outputs from these projects (i.e., oral histories, research data) that can be linked to collections - need to discuss this further, however.
Bradford and Keighley Local Studies Archive
They have shared links to blogs and websites showcasing their collections as well as some of the work of their volunteers which you can view here - Bradford and Keighley Local Studies
Connecting Saltaire and Bradford Museum and Galleries collections
This has been an interest of Maggie Smith from the Saltaire collection from the onset. Is this a good starting point as a connective resource for social machine experiments in Bradford? What techniques have we been using that might lend themselves to doing this? Who would want / needs to be involved?
Notes:
Potential to make links through the ‘Bradford Worthies’ and also the burial records. Potential to transform their work into machine readable formats, and then model that to see how that connects to other aspects of our data. Is there scope to look into ABBYY Finereader for some of their burial records. Good to think about how BHRU might mention the cemetery. All to look at theme map and get in touch with Alex F if there is a theme they are interested in.
Actions:
Oral histories, transcriptions, mappings, and in-person events. Tim S notes that Al is very good at organising events. Co-ordinate catching up with Alex B, perhaps Tim S and Stefania. Potential for Daniel to invite Al to the Geospatial mapping workshop. Actions: