Tricia Cooper, School of Art & Design, and Dr. Richard A. Hawkins, Department of History, Politics & War Studies History on Your Doorstep: The University of Wolverhampton and the Wolverhampton City Archives

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 in- house 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 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 Express & Star, 2013

Air Raids: Tatlow’s Premises, Cleveland Road, Wolverhampton, 28 August 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

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