In April 2017, Mansfield Museum set out to learn more about the town’s textile industry, through interviews with those who worked in it. We wanted to celebrate the culmination of our ‘Made in Mansfield’ gallery project, made possible by the Heritage Lottery Fund, with a special look at a huge part of Mansfield’s history.
This project has enabled us to enhance our knowledge of the industry and add to our archives with images and oral histories, helping to ensure that the stories of Mansfield’s workers are kept and treasured. Workers came forward and generously shared their stories with us on camera, and some also brought photos & memorabilia.

Inspired by their stories, local artist Clare Taylor led the creation of the art installation, which takes the form of socks in various shapes and sizes. Each sock tells a story about a different aspect of life in the factories. They have the names, images and history of local mills and mill workers stitched, knitted and printed on to them. Led by Clare, dozens of local people helped make the socks during workshops for embroidery, crochet, image transfer and collaging. The whole process was filmed by John Slemensek of Bokehgo. The socks now have a permanent home in Mansfield Museum’s ‘Made in Mansfield’ gallery, alongside the film, as a piece of textile history recorded in textile art.

In August, in collaboration with County Youth Arts, we held a summer school with six local young musicians and two professional musicians to produce music for the film. All of the music in ‘Mills, Machines and Memories’ was written, arranged, played and recorded during that week, at the Old Library Recording Studio. Using the sound of mill machines and images of textile workers as inspiration, the group have created a beautifully sensitive soundtrack, which was also ‘Made in Mansfield’.

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