Case Study: Exploring Working-Class Local Heritage with School Children
What is this case study about?
This case study was produced by Historic England, based on the work of the 'Beneath our Feet' project by Queens Hall Arts.
Through their work, Queens Hall Arts created opportunities for children to co-create art around the theme of the working-class lives of people involved in Northumberland's historic but nearly invisible heavy industries.
Through co-created planning and consultation, the project created bodies of artwork in each school of the Haydon Bridge Partnership for schools and their community to increase knowledge and awareness of working-class heritage. Beneath our Feet is an excellent example of successfully working with school-aged children and teachers to tell working-class heritage stories.
What are the key learnings?
- Children enjoy taking ownership of research topics about where they live and co-creating with artists. Film interviews, visits and class feedback indicate that the co-creation process was longer than they would usually spend, in art forms they wouldn't usually access and more enjoyable, relaxing and fun
- Creating heritage projects with participants involved from the very beginning creates excitement, enthusiasm and a strong sense of ownership with research and the project's outputs
- One of the most wide-reaching and efficient ways to communicate work with school children and the wider school community is to disseminate information in school assemblies. This could also be applied to any project working with school-aged children or even universities
- Visuals such as introductory films played in assemblies, alongside information on how to sign up and take part, made the themes of the project, working with artists, co-creating art, and the working-class heritage of the area more tangible for young people
What was the project about?
Beneath our Feet worked with 12 schools in rural west Northumberland, covering reception to year 13, to explore the hidden histories of local working-class people involved in historical heavy industries.
The project worked specifically to uncover and record stories linked with the area's mining heritage, including lead, coal and mineral mines. This history had become nearly invisible within the rural landscape, with no heritage sites or museums that explore this rural working-class history in the surrounding area.
The memories of those who remember the mines and those who worked in them are at risk of disappearing. Through a focus on the everyday lives of the workers, their families, and the industry's impact on the region, the project aimed to increase local knowledge and understanding of a shared past and helped preserve the history of local mining.
Through visits to heritage sites, talks from local people linked to mining, and researching archive resources, young people learned about the working-class heritage around them. A steering group selected 3 artists to find new and exciting ways to co-create artworks and resources to share this working-class history with their schools and wider communities.
What were the aims of this project?
Beneath our Feet was an excellent opportunity to increase knowledge and understanding of a shared past, help preserve the history of local mining, and engage school children in heritage.
The aims of the project were:
- To ensure that new generations of school children will be able to explore and know the working-class heritage of Northumberland’s rural landscape, specifically the heavy industry
- To help local children develop and sustain a deeper connection to their local heritage through co-creating artworks alongside established artists
- For children’s creative and heritage learning to be combined to inspire a personal sense of belonging and connection to the heritage of the place they live
- To give teachers and students the chance to gain experience in recruiting and working with professional artists
- For Queen’s Hall Arts to trial an approach to co-creating an arts and heritage project across multiple schools
What were the outcomes?
- Children were able to enjoy co-creating and researching the project, as well as co-creating the artworks with 4 artists who worked across 12 schools in the Haydon Bridge Partnership. This created a sense of ownership and connection to the history being told and the project's outputs
- Through co-creating the project, schools felt involved enough to showcase films about the project and share the digital artworks with families and community guests, including local miners who remembered the heritage being researched
- Through an exhibition of the artworks with at least 5000 visitors, the project was able to reach a large audience and create a legacy for the work of the school children, which was boosted by the creation of a film and webpage dedicated to the project
How do we ensure children are co-creating?
Beneath our Feet is an excellent example of co-creating a project. To ensure co-creation from the start, an interactive, drama-based workshop was designed and delivered that orientated staff and students on what the project was about and how they needed to work together to decide what we wanted from an artist.
This was a new process for all involved but was used to great success. In leading with the needs of the children’s engagement, understanding and enjoyment, the storytelling process explored:
- What an artist is
- What art children might enjoy
- What new forms or themes of art the children may wish to learn about and explore
- What the children and teachers would want an artist to be like when working with them
Following this, a shortlisting selection process took place, which was voluntary. The process was built around children’s curiosity and preference. The artists were asked to apply their ideas in accessible ways for children. The children and teachers then heard about the different artists and ranked them in order of interest, choosing the top 6 to interview. Interviews were hosted virtually in a school, and staff and students took turns asking questions.
Through this process, children got a feel for how kind the artist would be to work with, whether they understood what the artist’s process would be like for them, and if it sounded fun. A class from each school then researched industrial heritage sites nearby where they learn and live. They were given the brief of ‘ordinary working people and heavy industry’, in order to gather an overview of the wide-ranging industries that were the economic drivers for the region in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Finally, each artist had a phone meeting with the school to gain insight into the research that had taken place. The first part of each artist’s journey was to receive the research from students before moving on to the process of creating the artworks.
What lessons were learned?
- It is a big ask for schools to agree to unknown outcomes of a co-creation project when school life is so busy, but after trials, schools fed back that they saw and felt the benefits
- A call-to-action may increase the interest of teachers and students alike by instilling an exciting ‘mission’ to uncover local heritage before it is lost
- The main challenge to this project was communicating between 14 schools and the travel distances between each. Support for additional capacity was gratefully received. The co-creation of the artist brief and recruitment was a pilot that proved to be an eye-opener for schools and something to build on for Queens Hall Arts
Usually the teachers tell us what is happening, but with this project we told them.
We loved taking part in the project. We aim to give our children a clear sense of their place in their community and the history that has shaped it. The children absolutely loved the workshops and were over the moon that so many members of the community came to our assembly, where we played their audio recording for the first time. Our pupils have taken so much away from the project, both personally and academically.
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