History on Your Doorstep:
The University of Wolverhampton and the
Wolverhampton City Archives
Tricia Cooper,
School of Art & Design,
and
Dr. Richard A. Hawkins,
Department of History,
Politics & War Studies
Wolverhampton City Archives
Introduction
• The University of Wolverhampton has built a strong
collaborative relationship with the Wolverhampton City
Archives (WCA) over the last half century
• In the 1960s the university, then known as the
Wolverhampton College of Technology, founded an inhouse academic journal, West Midlands Studies, which
often published articles during its two decade life span
drawing upon the collections of the WCA and other Black
Country municipal archives
Department of History, Politics & War Studies
• More recently SLSSC’s Department of History, Politics &
War Studies (HPWS) has developed a strong
partnership with the WCA
• Our Level 4 study skills and methodology module, The
Pursuit of History, includes a fieldtrip to the City Archive
• Our Level 6 work placement module, History in the
Community, includes the option of a work placement at
WCA
Alireza:
One of the University of
Wolverhampton’s
Level 6
history work
placement students
assisting an
archivist during his
placement at the
Wolverhampton City
Archives
Department of History, Politics & War Studies
• History, politics and war studies students also have the opportunity
to do a work placement at WCA as part of Level 4: Volunteering in
the Community and Level 5: Volunteering in Action
• We also periodically have undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral
students who undertake dissertations or theses based on the
collections of the WCA
• Doctoral dissertations include a history of the Wolverhampton
Conservative Party while a recent undergraduate dissertation looked
at the development of a modern sewerage system in Victorian
Wolverhampton
School of Art & Design
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The School of Art & Design has also developed a strong relationship with
WCA
It is currently involved in a number of Heritage Lottery Fund bids with WCA
One of these bids is in partnership with Wolverhampton’s evening
newspaper, The Express & Star
It involves the digitisation of some 750,000 photographs taken over the last
139 years onto a website available to the general public
Very few local newspaper photographic archives have survived
The photograph of bomb damage in Second World War Wolverhampton is a
good example of its potential value to historians
Wartime censorship means relatively few such images have survived
The original photographs will be moved from the Express & Star to state of
the art, temperature controlled storage at the Wolverhampton City Archives
Express & Star Photographic Archive
@ Express & Star, 2013
Air Raids:
Tatlow’s Premises,
Cleveland Road,
Wolverhampton,
28 August 1942
@ Express & Star
School of Art & Design
• School of Art & Design students have helped with pilot
work which has provided information on numbers,
conditions and categories of photographs
• The School believes the collaboration of Art & Design
students in a project of this nature is unique
• The resulting resource will provide a source of contextual
studies for undergraduates
• For example, in the case of photography students it will
provide excellent material for documentary photography
case studies
School of Art & Design
• The School will be able to draw upon the
expertise from a previous project, the Wayne
Hemingway Project, which has created the
world’s largest electronic archive of Popular
Culture, the Land of Lost Content
• This involved scanning, digitising and tagging
• The database is made up of tens of thousands
of images, scanned or photographed from their
original source
Conclusion
• Students are at the centre at the University of
Wolverhampton’s collaboration with the Wolverhampton
City Archives
• By providing our students with placement opportunities
this may offer up a wider field of potential jobs for them
through this wider audience
• Students can also participate in the Wolverhampton
Employability Award to gain certificated recognition of
their placement experience together with other
employability skills and qualities, which will be recorded
on their degree transcript alongside their academic
achievements
Thank you for listening ……