Back in September, we worked with Z-Arts and MADE to help create a resource for a new educational local history project called ‘Story Archivists of Manchester’, or S.A.M. for short. This exciting project aims to engage schoolchildren with local history through practical workshops where they become apprentice ‘Story Archivists’, exploring historical objects, looking for clues to help understand what life was like for children at different periods in Manchester’s history, and linking this to the rights of children today.
As part of the project, one of the archivists at Archives+, Jenny, was filmed in the archive strong rooms talking about the work that she and the archives team do at Archives+. She also presented some items from the Manchester collections, linking these to topics the children went on to explore in the workshops. The footage from Archives+ appears in a film shown to the children at the start of the workshop, helping them understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from different sources, and how archives help everyone to access those sources.
The pilot workshops took place in Webster Primary School at the end of November, and children took part in lots of different activities based on the objects in their story archive boxes, including a story walk, making their own artefacts and playing with old-fashioned toys (marbles were extremely popular!). Feedback from the pilot sessions was good, the children ‘loved the magic of it and got involved and played along.’ We’re really pleased we had the opportunity to participate in such a lovely project!
Z-Arts and MADE plan to expand the project and deliver workshops in more schools in 2025, so we’re looking forward to more Manchester schoolchildren learning a little bit about Archives+ as they become apprentice ‘Story Archivists.’