Bolton's Worktown Festival will go ahead as online event

On Tuesday, July 14, the University of Bolton’s Centre for Worktown Studies will present a free one-day online Festival of Worktown comprising talks, workshops, displays of art, music and a dramatic production, all in some way inspired by Bolton’s identity of Worktown.

Tom Harrisson, the founder of the ‘Worktown’ project, claimed that Mass Observation chose Bolton because it believed it to be “representative of the industrial life pattern” that prevailed for the majority of people in Britain.

As a large northern industrial town, this was to some extent true, but as with any town, Bolton had its unique identity.

As the principal cotton town in South Lancashire it shared many of the social, cultural and economic patterns found across the cotton industry.

But even within this context, Bolton had its own history, institutions and customs.

Initiated 83 years ago, the Worktown project is today not only an internationally recognised social study of a northern industrial town but a local history archive of everyday working-class life in Bolton.

Although much of the physical infrastructure has disappeared, much remains. Pubs, markets, schools, housing estates and churches featuring in the Worktown study still exist, all forming part of Bolton’s social and cultural life.

Over the past decade the Centre for Worktown Studies, working with Bolton Museum and other cultural institutions in the town, has sought to re-connect modern Bolton with the Worktown project, the results of which were never shared with the people of Bolton who were the objects of its investigation.

Certainly the Worktown archive enriches the local history of Bolton, but as awareness of it has grown it has become not only a widely consulted historical record but an inspirational theme for cultural creativity.

This Festival of Worktown combines both of these functions.

We invite everyone to join us; you are welcome to be with us the whole day or you can just register for the sessions you are interested in at www.boltonschoolofthearts.co.uk/worktown-festival-programme

Programme of events

9.20am Welcome to the Festival

Professor Bob Snape, Centre for Worktown Studies, University of Bolton.

9.30am Creative Writing Workshop for Adults: Session A.

Presented by Dr. Valerie O’Riordan, School of the Arts, University of Bolton

The first of two creative writing workshops focussing on the theme of Everyday Life.

In this first workshop will join in a conversation about observation and record-keeping, explore a selection of visual prompts from the Worktown archives, and consider their own daily experiences in the context of the current international lockdowns. After the session, they will create their own written responses to the theme: these might be fiction, non-fiction, poetry or dramatic monologues. No prior experience of creative writing is necessary.

Please note that intending participants should also register for the second workshop

Creative Writing Workshop for Adults: Session B

Registration will be limited to the first 12 people.

10.10am Happiness in Bolton - Let’s Share it with the World

Presented by Professor Jerome Carson and Sandie McHugh, School of Psychology, University of Bolton.

In 2013, Professor Snape showed Jerome Carson letters about happiness, which had been written by Bolton residents in 1938. Jerome immediately saw the research potential in this work, that had almost lain undisturbed in the Mass Observation Archive for many decades.

Historian and psychologist Sandie McHugh, has worked with Jerome on this research. Apart from replicating the original Worktown Happiness Study, Sandie and Jerome have extended this research. Sandie has travelled the globe telling folk about the work in Bolton. “Happiness in a Northern Town” is the second book on the topic, which will be coming out in the summer. During their presentation, Sandie and Jerome are going to launch a prize competition for the 10 best e-mails on how this research has impacted on you the audience.

11.10am Photographing the English North 1890-1990

Presented by Dr Ian Glover and Dr Keith Roberts, School of the Arts, University of Bolton

‘Photographing the English North, 1890-1990’ is an exhibition curated for the 2020 Festival of Worktown Studies.

The exhibition attempts to examine how English northernness has been recorded and used to portray people, objects and places that are located within the region, and is based on Dr. Glover’s research. The exhibition has been supported by Bolton Museums and Libraries, the University of Bolton and with special support from the Centre for Worktown Studies. Photographs are drawn from a range of national and international collections and include pieces from Michael Kenna, Bill Brandt, Martin Parr, Bert Hardy, Humphrey Spender, Sirkka Liisa Konttinen, Tish Murtha, Chambre Hardman and John Davies and many other celebrated photographers.

11.10am Who were Bolton’s Mass Observers? (Live from Worktown)

Presented by Dave Burnham, Live from Worktown

One hundred people volunteered for Mass Observation’s Worktown Study between 1937 and 1940, including around 30 local working people.

Although mentioned in both academic and popular accounts we have not found any proper investigation of them. Live from Worktown pulled together a small research group to do exactly this. Lockdown stopped this work, but we’re presenting interim findings here, including: who the local volunteers were; the roles of the local volunteers; how they got on with outside observers; what happened to them in later life.

The interim findings, including full details of the local volunteers, will be available on the Live from Worktown website https://www.livefromworktown.org

11.50am Washing Line

Presented by Bolton U3A Stitch and Craft Group

The Washing Line was inspired by the U3A Stitch and Craft Group browsing the iconic Worktown photos of Humphrey Spender that contributed to the Mass Observation project of the 30s.

Of all the photos, the one that resonated the most was the photo of the back street washing line. This inspired the group to create a washing line installation that represents home life, crafting (which is still alive and kicking!) and the events of the years 1937-1938.

The 30 minute programme will include recorded contributions from Mary Corcoran and Serena Johnson and other Stitch and Craft members talking about the items that they have researched, made and collected for the installation and what connects them to the everyday life of ‘Worktown’.

12.30pm Making Textiles. Designers for Industry

Presented by Donna Claypool, School of the Arts, University of Bolton

This exhibition features research which is currently exploring the historical patterns of a Bolton based company Joseph Johnson Ltd, a weaving company managed by the Hollas family.

These domestic textile patterns reveal global connections and Bolton’s rich textile history.

The Museum holds a wealth of these patterns dating from c.1940s up to 1970s, many in the form of swatch samples for records of sale. Several are also accompanied by the original designs that reveal working practices of designers for industry.

The research focuses on the creative reinterpretation of these patterns and their original, and future, context. Part of the exhibition also features work by the ‘Wonder Woman’ community group, creating a new set of pattern images for large-scale collaborative banners.

1pm A performance by Mike Chadwick of songs inspired by Worktown

1.30pm Spinning Tales: A Celebration of Worktown by 21st Century Cotton Queens

Presented by Kath Thomasson and Brid Andrews, School of the Arts, University of Bolton; Sandra Nichol, University Centre, Blackburn College and Gaynor Cox, Percent for Art, Bolton at Home.

The ‘Cotton Queens’ are members of a women’s community project, jointly run by Bolton at Home and the University of Bolton and funded by Ambition for Ageing.

The aim of the project is for women to develop skills, confidence and wellbeing by engaging with cultural and historical aspects of the Bolton area and its community. Specifically, the women have researched the lives of mill girls by examining the Worktown Collection of Mass Observation, 1937 to 1940, that provides an insight into their experiences in the mills and on holiday in Blackpool.

The Cotton Queens will recount personal stories of their journeys and this will be followed by an opportunity to listen to an extract from their play ‘Worktown Wakes Girls’.

There will be an opportunity to discuss the project with the project leaders as well as the Cotton Queens, ending with a showing of a short project documentary. We will also be launching the digital version of the project book - Spinning Tales: A Celebration of Worktown by 21st Century Cotton Queens published by the Centre for Worktown Studies.

2.40pm Comparing shopping in 1930’s Bolton with shopping in 2020 - Bolton Town Centre and Halliwell Road

Presented by Bolton U3A Local History Group

This presentation looks at shopping habits in Bolton, using Halliwell Road and parts of Bolton Town Centre to compare and contrast shopping in 1930’s Worktown Bolton with shopping in 2020 (well, before the Coronavirus lockdown!)

Pictures and documents from the Mass Observation archive and other sources will be used to illustrate how shopping has changed over the years.

3.30pm Allen Clarke and the Factory System

Dr Paul Salveson (University of Bolton)

Allen Clarke was born in Bolton, less than half a mile from where today’s University of Bolton stands, in 1863.

His parents were both mill workers. His ‘audience’ was the industrial working class of south-east Lancashire. Between the 1890s and late 1920s he was Lancashire’s most popular writer, producing a weekly paper between 1896 and 1908 and writing for a range of regional newspapers in Lancashire.

His ‘Tum Fowt’ dialect sketches sold over a million copies, according to Clarke and he wrote over 20 novels. He was much more than a writer of entertaining sketches. He developed a sophisticated critique of ‘the factory system’. His book ‘Effects of the Factory System’ was based on life in Bolton in the 1890s and was translated into Russian by Tolstoy, whose vision of an agrarian, non-governmental society Clarke admired. He was instrumental in setting up the Lancashire Authors’ Association, whose library is in the process of being transferred to the University of Bolton. This paper will explore Clarke’s attitudes towards ‘Worktown’ and what remains of his legacy today.

4.10pm Creative Writing Workshop for Adults: Session B

Presented by Dr Valerie O’Riordan, School of the Arts, University of Bolton.

The second creative writing workshop will give participants from the morning session a chance to share their work. This session will take the form of a virtual open-mic session, interspersed with discussion, as participants speak about their experiences observing and writing about the Everyday.

Maximum number of 12.