WORK Records: Historian

WORK Records sets out to explore ideas and the realities of historic working lives, with a particular focus on three ‘family firms’, as represented in the collections of our heritage partners collections and elsewhere.

Three ‘investigative teams’ – curators, historians, existing and former workers, and artist facilitators – will explore each particular historic collection, identifying records and objects, and seeing where they lead us, and to who, and what stories they can tell, about working lives.

Three short, animated films will articulate this new knowledge and understanding, telling previously hidden and untold stories of working lives, and will be the catalyst and inspiration for an extensive public engagement programme, including screenings & discussions, workshops, a ‘staff newspaper’ publication, and the core of an online resource.

Our heritage collection partners are Derbyshire Records Office, Corby Heritage Centre, and John Smedley Archive. Whilst the collections are distinctive, they are geographically and culturally connected as part of the East Midlands, and, more specifically, we will focus on holdings relating to family firms: Smedley (Lea Mills), Robinson and Sons (Bolsover) and Stuart and Lloyds (Corby). Alongside the archive collections, we are working with arts organisations Junction Arts in Chesterfield and Fermynwoods Contemporary Art in Northamptonshire, the history team at the University of Derby, and Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

Location: Remote working, with travel across the East Midlands
Contract: Freelance, 25 days over May 2025 – November 2026
Fee: £5,000 (calculated as £200 a day, 35 hour FTE) plus travel and accommodation expenses

WORK Records is made possible with National Lottery Heritage Fund support thanks to National Lottery players. The project is also supported by Arts Council England.