The Centre for Worktown Studies was established in 2009 to undertake and promote academic research activity around the Humphrey Spender 'Worktown' collection of documentary photographs produced for Mass Observation in the late nineteen-thirties. This collection is held by Bolton Museum and the Centre is jointly established and managed by the University and Bolton Museum and Archive Service.
The origins of the Spender Collection lie in Mass Observation's 'Worktown' project which aimed to investigate and document everyday life in a northern industrial town. A Mass Observation team was established in Bolton in 1937 to produce a detailed written and photographic record of everyday life in Worktown. The written records of this project are now held at the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex. The Spender Collection, which comprises approximately 800 images taken in Bolton (and Blackpool as the Mass Observation team travelled there to observe 'Worktowners' on holiday) remains in Bolton Museum` and is a social documentary photographic archive of national and international significance.
The Centre has been designated a Good Practice Case Study of HEI- Museum collaboration by Renaissance North West.
The members include:
Bob Snape
Bob's principal research interests are in the social and cultural history of leisure in Great Britain between 1850 and 1939. In 2009 he established the University's Centre for Worktown Studies in partnership with Bolton Museum. He is currently working on the relationships between leisure, well-being and social re-construction in inter-war Britain.
Ian Beesley
Ian is a renowned social documentary photographer and is course leader for the University of Bolton's MA in Photography. His work includes reference to society at large with a special focus on industrial workforces – especially in northern England. In 2009 Ian's 'Born in Bradford' work was shown at two highly successful exhibitions at the National Media Museum and the Impressions Gallery in Bradford.
Caroline Edge
Caroline Edge is an AHRC funded PhD student based in The Centre for Worktown Studies at the University of Bolton. Her research is concerned with the development of a participatory photography project inspired by Humphrey Spender’s Worktown photographs, which were taken for Mass Observation in Bolton between 1937-1938. Her background is as a photographer and teacher. Her work has been exhibited widely at venues including the Photographer’s Gallery, the People’s History Museum in Manchester and the Look11 Liverpool Photography Festival.
Peter Swain
Peter Swain is a born and bred Boltonian who recently completed his PhD at the University of Bolton entitled 'Modern Football in Formation: A Case Study of South and East Lancashire 1830-1885'. He has subsequently worked on 'Recording Leisure Lives in Bolton in the Twentieth Century', made possible by funds from the Marriot Trust, which was donated to the University of Bolton Le Moors Rotary Club. As part of that he has recently completed a monograph on 'Cheap, Accessible and Glamorous: The Golden Age of the Cinema in Bolton' which is planned to be published early next year. His next area of study is 'Bolton Women at Play: The Story of "Our Game"' which will be a social and oral history of rounders in Bolton and District in the twentieth century.