Welcome to the Unlocking Collections Blog! Over the years, important documents and artefacts have been collected and put away for safe keeping, with only a small audience having had the privilege of viewing them. But now, after securing funding from Arts Council England, these items and archives will be available to the world to tell the forgotten stories and events that made the borough what it is today.
Our 10 volunteers are working to conserve, document and digitise materials from the archives of Cooperative Heritage Trust, as well as arts and heritage being preserved by Touchstones. The new materials will be showcased at a new Learning Hub in Rochdale town centre, which will also see the Cooperative Heritage Trust’s archive – currently housed in central Manchester – to return home to Rochdale.
Our volunteers are hard at work engaging with the archives and exploring stories from different perspectives to find themes of common ground to appeal to modern Rochdale audiences. So follow us along the journey and see what we uncover!
