Crafting the Past

Crafting the Past project is community-focused and community-based. It will ensure that community members are provided with the tools for creative expressions of their history and heritage; and to  explore diversity's impact on experiences with industrial heritage.  

These engagement activities will enhance assessment of the impacts of dominant historical narratives on civic engagement with industrial heritage. It is being conducted in partnership with Joined Up Heritage Sheffield (JUHS). JUHS also supports partnerships with groups such as Hillsborough and Owlerton Local History Group, Friends of Portland Works, SOAR Community and Sheffield and District African Caribbean Community Association (SADACCA) and many others.

The workshops present a great opportunity for the community to share their memories and create short stories, poems and visual narratives. Emotion networking, hands-on and reflection time are key components of the workshops.

The workshops are the sites of information and data collection with the opportunity to enliven Sheffield industrial heritage.

Emotion Networking session is designed to illuminate how memory shapes citizens’ perceptions of a place and its heritage. Creative Writing and Visual Narratives session  enhances participants’ skills to express memories and connections with Sheffield’s heritage. Hands-on session to structure ideas, feelings, and memories to draft or create short stories, poems and visual narratives. Participants’ experience, resulting work, and its significance are shared during reflection time.

The project will identify key historical and memory narratives and establish  connections between these references. It will also interpret results through to understand diverse representations of industrial heritage.

The data obtained through the workshops is coded and labelled using the appropriate tools. This is done to identify key historical and memory narratives. This process also include labeling of relevant references about different themes. Results will be interpreted using the relevant theoretical and analytical concepts in order to understand diverse representations of industrial heritage. 

The heart of the research project is its impact in the communities. It will generate community-led narratives about Sheffield's industrial heritage and contribute to policy impact.

This is being implemented through strategic dissemination of the outputs. There will be regular updates through the following online platforms -  University of Sheffield Marketing hub, Department of Archaeology and Joined Up Heritage Sheffield. 

An important output will be publication of an anthology of short stories and visual narratives created by the workshop participants. These will help to disseminate the project's development and output.