sounddelivery

Brief

When Mansfield Museum’s Museum Development Officer, Jodie Henshaw, discovered that one of the town’s major employer’s was relocating, she knew she had to act fast to preserve a piece of local heritage. The factory, known as the Metal Box, has been producing tins – from coffee to tobacco – for more than 150 years, with generations of local people passing through its gates.

Jodie secured funding from Renaissance East Midlands through the Museum Buddies programme and asked us to work with the museum and the local community to preserve an important part of local history.  

Approach

We put together a bespoke training package and project plan for the museum, with the aim of creating a digital time-capsule of memories from the factory.

sounddelivery’s senior producer, Mark, led a training workshop to teach Jodie and her colleagues about audio recording and editing. We then ran a ‘memory day’ where we invited staff, both past and present, to the museum to record their stories and memories. 

We set up a makeshift recording studio in one of the museum’s offices and carried out interviews throughout the day. It was thrilling to see different generations of local people arrive to talk about their memories of the factory. A reporter from the local paper, the Chad, also came and wrote an article about the day.

After making an initial assessment of the material collected at the memory day, we created an audio plan that outlined the topics and number of podcasts we could produce. The final categories included apprenticeships, health and safety, sports and social clubs, and working families.

Outcome

Every story was fascinating and the project proved to be a great success, preserving a part of Mansfield’s history that would otherwise have been lost. Alongside the audio we also created an audio slideshow to provide an overview of the project. The audio interviews and audio slideshow will form part of an exhibition on the history of the factory which will run in September and October 2011.

What Mansfield Museum says

“The staff at Mansfield Museum have been truly inspired by working with sounddelivery – the guidance and support offered by your team has motivated the museum to look at developing more digital projects, which will in turn improve access to Mansfield Museum and its collections.” Jodie Henshaw, Museum Development Officer, Mansfield Museum

Watch and listen to our work

As one of the biggest employers in Mansfield the Metal Box saw lots of local families working side-by-side. Sisters Rose and Jacqeline Smith sisters worked at the factory in the 1960s. They were often on the production line and found themselves doing the same jobs. Listen to their memories of the factory:

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Watch the audio slideshow: