Museum of Science and Industry

African, Caribbean and Asian visitors to MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry) have been invited to delve into the Museum's vast archive collection, to uncover hidden treasures which tell the stories of Manchester's links with their heritage. Rare West African material swatches, photos, beautifully painted shippers' tickets and building plans are amongst the archives displayed.

Printed cotton and machinery were amongst the large number of exports from Manchester to former colonial countries, with some Manchester companies such as the engineering firm Mather and Platt, textile merchant Paterson Zochonis and locomotive manufacturer Beyer Peacock, becoming household names in West Africa and India. The archives display will demonstrate this history and aims to encourage people to tell their own stories about the Manchester products and trading links.

Senior Archivist Jan Hargreaves said: "The display features archive material which tells the stories of Manchester's links with African, Caribbean and Asian countries, but we're keen to learn from our visitors too. At the moment, we can only tell the story from a white, colonial point of view, and we want to know the other side - what Manchester means to the different communities who have made their home here, and how coming to Manchester has shaped their lives. This is an important part of Manchester's story, but we need help to unlock these secrets hidden in our archive collections. Putting these collections on display is the first step in doing that."

Ishmael Wright moved from Jamaica to Manchester in 1961 and has lived in the city ever since. He says that it is important that we understand that our heritage is shared. "I started work on the railway at Victoria station and I stayed there all my working life. Since I retired my friends and I formed a little group called 'Mapping Our Lives' and we go to schools and we pass on our life stories to children. My ancestors were slaves so their work helped to develop the tea, chocolate and cotton trade, which in turn became part of British culture."

Visitors are invited to come and see examples of fabrics from the Paterson Zochonis company which were worn by West African women, photographs of electricity cable being laid in Calcutta in the 1930s and documents relating to the development of railways in Africa. There are also plans of a Mumbai textile mill built in the 1880s and reports sent back from countries on the Indian sub-continent by representatives of Manchester companies.

The display linked to Archives Awareness Day at MOSI on 8 November, which was held in association with Manchester University's Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Trust. The Trust aims to work with members of Manchester's African, Caribbean and Asian communities to help understand the Museum's archive collections.

Visitors to the open day found out about the contributions African, Asian and Caribbean people have made to the history of Britain through the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relation Resource Centre's resources. These include transcripts of community oral history recordings such as those done with attendees at the 1945 Pan African Congress, participants in the Roots Oral History Project and members of Manchester's ethnic minority communities (including Sikh, African, African Caribbean, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani) who took part in the Trust's own community history project. Items from the Steve Cohen anti-deportation campaigns archive were also on display, including badges, posters and leaflets, and newspaper cuttings concerning the Moss Side and Oldham riots.

Take Your Place in History display runs until 31 December in the Collections Centre.

For more information or pictures of archives please call Sarah Roe on Tel: 0161 606 0176.

http://www.racearchive.org.uk/
http://archiveawareness.com

Back to news