People’s History Museum, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 from 14:00 to 17:00 (BST)

Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/museums-and-academics-research-network-meeting-1-tickets-12330190933

Curious about the People’s History Museum? Never been? Only been as an undergraduate? Want to use our nationally important collections in your teaching and research?

The People’s History Museum is keen to develop our links with academic colleagues from across the north west. We’d like to invite you to find out how you could use the collections within your teaching and research and discuss with us how we can create a vibrant hub of activity that we can all benefit from.

Bring along (or even send beforehand) your syllabuses and timetables, and ideas, and we can look at co-creating content for you and your students. The afternoon has an intentionally loose structure with archive, collections and learning staff on hand to answer any specific questions about what PHM and its collection has to offer.

Programme

  • 14:00 – Introduction to PHM – Louise Sutherland (Head of Collection and Engagement)
  • 14:15 – Introduction to collections and exhibitions – Chris Burgess (Curator)
  • 14:30 – Introduction to the archive collections – Heather Roberts (Archivist)
  • 14.45 – Introduction to the learning offer – Kirsty Mairs (Learning Manager)
  • 15:00 – Tea and coffee
  • From 15:30 onwards – tours of galleries focussing on various aspects of collection including art, politics, history? Tour of archives, examining Labour party archive, CPGB, etc

It would be great if people could join us for a drink in the local pub afterwards

About the Collections

The People’s History Museum holds the largest collection of political material in Britain, spanning working people’s demand for a better world to the organisations that represented them. Befitting the national museum of democracy, objects related to the fight for the vote make up a core of the collection. These range from the early 19th century radicalism, through to the suffragettes, to the lowering of the age limit from 21 to 18 in 1969. PHM is an internationally significant political archive and includes the complete holdings of the Labour Party and Communist Party of Great Britain. Conservative Party and early Liberal Party material is strongly represented as are other organisations including the Department for Work and Pensions, the Trades Union Congress and The Co-operative Group. We continue to collect, with contemporary material being added all the time. The museum is gathering one of the largest collections related to LGBTQ history. We also actively seek material from recent events and protest including Scottish Independence, Occupy and Anti-Fracking.

The nature of the collection is hugely varied. The PHM’s collection of trade union and political banners is the largest and most important of its type in the world. There is a collection of over 2,000 posters covering elections and issue campaigns. As an archive of design this is hugely underappreciated and under resourced and we are keen to hear from academics looking to use this resource. Satire forms a strong part of our holdings, with over 300 18th, 19th and 20th century political cartoons. There are 7,000 badges and tokens from the late 19th century to the present day. PHM also holds over 95,000 photographic images covering labour history, the Labour Party and more general political history.