Wind-lashed Preston on a wet-ish Wednesday afternoon in August might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the city has a certain charm.
And one of its indisputable assets is the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, which has benefited from investment from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Renaissance in the Regions and the city council over the past few years.
As well as sprucing up the entrance and revamping some of the permanent displays, the money has been used to develop temporary exhibitions, including the current offering, Industrial Revolutionaries: People Who Shaped the Modern World.
The exhibition stakes the claim for Preston and the north-west of England as the birthplace and powerhouse of the industrial revolution (although try telling that to Ironbridge Gorge).
What is indisputable though is that Preston has been the setting for great invention and protest, and this story is told through some of the key players, from inventors to some genuine revolutionaries.
The seven protagonists are introduced with short biographies and silhouette portraits at the beginning of the exhibition, and then each is given their own display area and separate heading.
So the inventor Richard Arkwright appears under the caption Risk-takers and Opportunists. Arkwright’s story is told through a selection of key objects, his trunk and wig blocks (he was a trained barber). There are also simple interactive elements – wigs to try on and a Dragons’ Den-style “who would you invest in?” challenge.
The overall design of the exhibition is strong and the designers have made each section a cohesive unit by using key elements from the original documentation as background motifs. So the backdrop to Arkwright’s story is the original advert for his barber shop and wig-making business, repeated and writ large.
Striking a balance
The choice of individuals is obviously the key to this type of narrative and, on the whole, the balance is about right between those that innovated (and got fat off the profits) and those that fought for change.
Joseph Livesey comes under the latter category. A self-educated and self-made man, the section devoted to him is entitled Put No Rum In Me – a reference to the temperance movement that he led.
But Livesey was no evangelising killjoy. He campaigned against the building of a new workhouse in Preston because of the harsh conditions for inhabitants and the fact that it would mean splitting up families.
This was very much a live debate as the 1860 cotton famine caused mass unemployment in the north-west. People literally couldn’t afford to eat – a fact illustrated by the printing block used to print vouchers that could be swapped for food in local shops.
Three paintings by Thomas Wade, Come Whoam to Thy Childer an’ Me, provide a stark contemporary warning against the dangers of drink. A delicately engraved silver trowel used to lay the foundation stone for the new workhouse tells visitors that Livesey lost this particular battle.
Let There be Light focuses on father Joseph Dunn, who was responsible for bringing coal and gas lighting to Preston, the first town outside London to be lit by coal gas lighting. But despite interactives that explore how coal gas was made, and even what it smelt like, this section fails to engage.
This illustrates one of the weaknesses of the exhibition. The title, Industrial Revolutionaries, suggests a passionate story with fiery and zealous characters taking centre stage in the narrative.
But some of the characters fail to come alive. The language and labels are precise, but it sometimes feels as if the passion has been edited out.
Lack of interpretation
This is true of A Kind Gentleman, the story of reverend John Clay, the chaplain at Preston prison who improved hygiene and conditions at the prison and introduced education for prisoners.
A horse and whip placed in front of a graphic illustration of its use provides a startling example of how prisoners were punished at the time. But Clay’s motivation as a prison reformer is unclear and the limited interpretation leaves you wanting more.
One prisoner, John Colecliffe, describes Clay as a “kind gentleman” in a letter found hidden behind a mirror, but there is no indication of what he was in prison for or how long his sentence was. There is no obvious source of more information, or layered interpretation for those seeking detail.
People’s Hero, the story of Henry Hunt, the first Radical MP for Preston, captures some of his spirit but is still rather lacking in passion.
This charismatic campaigner persuaded people to vote for him in 1830, when there was no secret ballot, and spoke at the Peterloo massacre. He was known as “the orator” but, disappointingly, his words are not included anywhere in the display.
Change of pace
Ten Per Cent and No Surrender, the story of the 1853 cotton-workers strike, signals a change of pace and design. Vertical display boards with seating areas in between allow visitors to dip into the story of the protest.
At first, the audio of contemporary protest songs is a little grating, but as you get sucked into the story, you realise that the 40 ballads created at the time were an effective way of communicating the strike’s aims and engendering solidarity.
The personalities here are George Cowell, the moderate strike leader, and Mortimer Grimshaw, the more militant campaigner.
Excerpts from letters between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provide a broader political context, while copies of Hard Times by Charles Dickens and North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who both drew on the strike for inspiration, are also available.
The final section, Behind the Looms, features Annie Hill, who worked at Horrocks Mill at the turn of the last century as a tenter – an apprentice weaver who toiled half a day at the mill and went to school for the rest of the day.
Hill was the subject of a portrait by artist Patti Mayor in 1906, which was exhibited at the Harris in 1949 and is on display again now.
After this a section on a royal visit by King George V and Queen Mary interrupts the narrative. The royal couple visited Horrocks Mill in 1913, but that seems to be the only link to the story.
This is a distraction because the Harris clearly has plenty of contextual material about the mill including a huge scale model, which is displayed against the backdrop of 1900s film footage and audio, giving a flavour of the relentless clatter of the looms.
Strong story
Despite the lack of passion in places, this innovatively designed exhibition has a strong story to tell and is backed by a good events programme and heritage trail.
It’s a shame then that the North West Regional Development Agency, which supported the exhibition, is being wound up, and that the North West Hub is subject to the same nervy future as the rest of the Renaissance in the Regions programme.
- Cost £92,400
- Main funders North West Regional Development Agency, Renaissance North West, European Regional Development EUI, Industrial Powerhouse.
- Exhibition design and build Bogacki Design, Leach Colour
- Exhibition ends 6 November