14.03.2025
We are pleased to announce that Derby based Animate Projects has been awarded a £147,170 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver WORK Records, an 18 month creative heritage project that will ‘animate’ historic working lives across the East Midlands.
WORK Records brings together investigative teams of heritage curators, historians, artists, current and former workers and volunteers to explore the holdings of three heritage collections – Derbyshire Record Office, Corby Heritage Centre and John Smedley Archive – to discover what they can tell us about working lives three family firms: John Smedley at Lea Mills, packaging firm Robinson and Sons in Chesterfield, and steel manufacturer Stewarts & Lloyds Ltd in Corby.
The artists will make short animated documentaries that will literally animate these important, untold stories of the significance, ideas, realities, and contemporary resonance of regional family firms, bringing heritage stories to life.
The films will be the catalyst for live and online events connecting contemporary workers and families with their historic counterparts. An online resource will document the project and host discoveries, increasing access to the collections, demonstrating the importance of heritage and how it resonates with how we live today.
Alongside the archive collections, Animate is working with 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.
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