Exploring ideas for our Living with Machines exhibition

An exhibition has been part of our plans since we began working on the funding bid that became Living with Machines in 2017 or so. In 2020 we began work in earnest on finding collaborators, finding dates at a suitable venue and thinking about how we could translate research findings from Living with Machines into an engaging exhibition. As we start to ask others to contribute in various ways, this post provides an early view of our thinking in early summer 2021.

The British Library is already working with groups in Leeds, so talking to Leeds Museums and Galleries was a natural fit. Our exhibition will be co-curated by Mia Ridge for the British Library, and John McGoldrick for Leeds, with a content group drawn from a range of teams across both institutions. We’re already working productively together to develop a creative outcome that’s unique to this collaboration, for launch next summer.

Our aim is to tell national stories about the mechanisation of work through a local lens. We want to surprise visitors with insights into some unexpected impacts of industrialisation on ordinary lives, alongside more familiar stories about technologies developed for various industries. For example, we might compare the timelines of changes to technologies and industrialisation in the cotton, wool and flax industries, and look at the national and international networks in which they were embedded as commodities. 

Other themes might include: the role of education and skills in workers’ changing occupations as the work available changed; exploring what people at the time thought a ‘machine’ was; the impact of industrial accidents and working conditions on individuals and their communities, and the language about accidents in newspapers at the time; ‘machines making machines’ and the role of precision engineering and thinking at machine-scale; and how the experience of workers changed in terms of their working conditions, agency and sociability, location and leisure activities, and how the timing and organisation of work changed as machines were incorporated into the workplace. 

Many of these themes have contemporary resonances, so we’re also thinking about how to include modern and local perspectives. There’s potential to build crowdsourcing projects around some of these questions closely related to ongoing research in the broader Living with Machines projects, and perhaps to work with local communities to share their stories. Perhaps family historians will know of ancestors whose lives changed as a result of mechanisation, or locals might be able to trace the impact of changing industries in their neighbourhood.

Interesting conundrums include the best way to build routes back to the research methods we’re developing across the project without making the exhibition ‘about’ the research. While some stories will be underpinned by findings with new research methods, a visitor shouldn’t feel they need to know anything about data science or digital history to enjoy the exhibition – but we also want to provide ways into our research if they’re interested.

We’re currently refining these potential themes as we look at objects in the British Library’s and Leeds Museums and Galleries collections. We’re also looking at potential loan objects that can help us tell these stories. If you’re aware of an object or stories that might fit within our broad themes, please get in touch via digitalresearch@bl.uk (please include ‘Living with Machines’ in the subject line).