And here are just a few of the truly amazing results! Everyone involved in the project was blown away with the writing produced in the workshop…and excited at the potential this approach has to help us better understand, and respond to, social haunting.
Read MoreAfter lunch, poet Andrew McMillan led a writing workshop. Andrew set two group two tasks: 1) write about ‘meeting’ an emotion in one of the places we’d visited2) write about another emotion from the perspective of an object associated with the mining industry.
Read MoreSome highlights of our walking tour of (sunny!) Barnsley, led by our project’s landscape archaeologist, Toby.
Read MoreAngela and I met with the organisers of Rochdale Literature and Ideas Festival today to discuss details of the project’s session at the event. It’s coming together really nicely; project Co-I, Andrew McMillan is running a poetry session, while comics artist Jim Medway runs a comic
Read MoreThis is a really interesting short documentary about the impact of the miners’ strike on the children of striking miners in North Staffs. Although it’s not from one the communities we’re focusing on, I think it’s very relevant for this project, especially towards the end when they talk about the lasting impacts of the strike on their lives as adults:
Read MoreNow we’re well into the exploratory stage of the project, we’re starting to plan the arts workshops - or Ghost Labs - for the next phase of our research. Andrew McMillan (one of the project co-investigators) is leading the poetry workshops and comic book creator and educator, Jim Medway, will be delivering comics workshops at both sites.
Read MoreA Social Haunting @ The National Co-operative Archives. “The archive affirms the past, present, and future; it preserves the records of the past and it embodies the promise of the present to the future”
Read MoreI’ve been at a conference in Northern Sweden, considering the impact of the absent mother in the cultural imagination; there was talk of the idea of the motherland, of mother earth, of the spectral mother who ‘haunts’ her children.
Read MoreAudio package from ‘Diggin’ Up Black Gold’ an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike in Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire in March 2014.
Read MoreThere’s a small pamphlet on one of my bookshelves, published in South Yorkshire around the time of the miners strike. It’s called ‘Strike’; I can’t off the top of my head remember who it’s by- it doesn’t so much matter right now.
Read MoreWhen Avery Gordon’s concept of a social haunting was initially described to me, I began to think about a long-standing sociological tradition on the collective memory. What are the delimitations around these concepts in relation to social haunting? Are we, for example, referring to things which haunt individuals or groups (I think the latter)?
Read MoreHauntings ghosts to feel the presence of that which is no longer there what if that which is no longer there has never been there at least not in our lifetime the children of the coalfields are haunted by a past they were not born into they were not born into a decline or a death they were born into a haunting
Read More@VaughanRoderick’s comparison of Coalfields and Election results
Read MoreI’ve been on different sides of AHRC CC projects. My first encounter with them was as a community partner, or consultant; brought in for my experience with working in schools and community settings and getting them writing. Now, as a full-time lecturer, I’ve scuttled back into the Academy, and am now on the other side of the fence. Reaching over to the community. Hopefully knocking down the barriers. Good fences (don’t) make good neighbours.
Read MoreThe first exploratory day at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum was held on 2nd April.This was partially to introduce the volunteers to the project, and we took the opportunity to explore what a Ghost Lab might look like and how it can best assist in the aims of the museum. In other words, as Bernice pointed out, there were many ‘ghostly trails’ that we could follow – perhaps too many for the project.
Read MoreWandering around on sites of former industry. It feels that somehow, the ghosts lie somewhere between the remembered and forgotten.
Read MoreAs a subject, ghosts are by their very nature hard to research. In part, our project aims to grapple with this issue: how do you go about finding the ghosts of social haunting? The first phase of our research has been labelled ‘exploration’. A time to explore the concept, the case studies and potential research methods. With my background in landscape archaeology, exploration is something that lies close to my heart. Our subject is all about exploring the physical environment, always on the lookout for the remnants of the past. We do this at a number of different scales: our surveys range from broad assessments of a character all the way down to centimetre perfect mappings of monuments.
Read MoreRecently, I carried out a fairly extensive phone survey of Barnsley area ‘Unite the Community’ members to tell them about the haunting project and our search for possible participants in our research. Sixteen people showed a strong interest in learning more and all agreed to attend an Introductory meeting which I arranged for March 23rd at the NUM Offices in central Barnsley. The plan was for Geoff to use the meeting to explain the project more fully and to outline the novel approach to research we envisaged. After discussion, Q & A etc., we hoped to sign-up most if not all those attending as willing research participants.
Read MorePhotos from the ‘March back to work’ 30th Anniversary, Sunday 8th March, 2015 at Hatfield in S. Yorks - site of one of the three remaining British deep coal mines. (All direct shots with permission)
Read MoreTwo miners’ strike commemoration events last weekend raised different social haunting issues for me. The first was the With Banners Held High (WBHH) celebration at Unity Works in Wakefield on Saturday 7th March, the second was the ‘march back’ at Hatfield Colliery - one of the 3 remaining British pits - on Sunday 8th (some photos posted here). Both events were very valuable, necessary and interesting but in different ways, and both spoke to the ‘past in the present’ in different ways too.
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