The Framework Knitters Museum has been awarded £71,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help fund a £100,000 redevelopment project, which includes the creation of Britain’s only Luddite Exhibition. The money will also help pay for a new educational resource for local schools that will explore the Luddism protest movement, which started in Nottinghamshire and spread across Victorian Britain’s manufacturing towns and cities.
New exhibition spaces will also be created and money invested into improving the authenticity of the Museum’s historic site. And visitors will gain an insight into early industrialisation and its social consequences by participating in a new interactive film where they’ll face the same dilemmas as the frameworkers who decided to revolt.
The Museum’s Manager, Paul Baker, said: ‘This funding will enable us to make a real difference. Not only will we be able to tell more stories about the workers and the trade but also to use the story of the Luddite uprising to encourage school pupils to consider contemporary issues such as gangs and criminal damage from a Victorian perspective.’
The redevelopment work is already underway and should be complete by next summer. You can find out more at www.frameworknittersmuseum.org.uk.
By Faye Stenson