Made in Manchester: Introduction
Where better to begin our digital teaching resources than the city of Manchester, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution? Our first guide ‘Made in Manchester’ offers a series of linked packages of curated digital resources telling the story of Manchester from its industrial past through its late twentieth century post-industrial reinvention. From politics, transport and industry, to music, theatre and sport, Manchester played a pivotal role in British and global history. This story is richly documented by the collections held in the University of Manchester Library
‘Made in Manchester’ is designed to be a modular package of resources that can be reused and repurposed by those designing and delivering teaching and learning. It offers an edited collection of high quality digital images of sources that are relevant to many disciplines and at all educational levels, from schools and college to undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It will also be of interest to adult learners and other groups interested in local history. Items selected for ‘Made in Manchester’ are representative rather than exhaustive.
For each themed ‘story’ there are links to additional resources alongside catalogue references and descriptions of the featured artefacts. We also end each blog post with a series of ‘Discussion Points’. These are designed to provoke deeper engagement with the the source material and the issues they raise. We decided early in the planning process not to include detailed teaching exercises as tutors will wish to re-purpose, adapt and apply these primary sources to their own specific context and desired learning outcomes.
Sources are arranged thematically and will cover the following topics:
- Civic life and local government, including Manchester’s Town Hall and the Manchester Guardian
- Politics and Protest (including Manchester’s role in equality, diversity and inclusion)
- Industry, manufacturing and science
- Cotton, enslavement and the founding of the University of Manchester
- Transport (canals, railways, trams and the rise of car culture)
- Manchester Migrations
- Humanitarian politics and relief work
- Global Manchester
- Literary Manchester
- Mapping Manchester
Looking for a dissertation topic?
‘Made in Manchester’, and the other thematic packages in this series, highlight some of spectacular rare books, archives, manuscripts, maps and visual collections available for further study at the University of Manchester, whether physical artefacts or digitised copies. It will therefore be relevant to third year and postgraduate students identifying dissertation and doctoral research topics.
Please note — ‘Made in Manchester’ is an evolving resource curated by many contributors. Additional posts will be added as they develop — if there is currently no hypertext link for a theme that is because that topic is still under development. Please contact us for further information on this series or to find out more about using Special Collections in Teaching and Learning.
The project lead on ‘Made in Manchester’ is Dr Janette Martin, Student Engagement Manager (Special Collections).
Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library. All images used on this page are licenced via CC-BY-NC-SA, for further information about each image, please follow the link in the caption description.
