Project to tell 'hidden history' of disabled people

A disability organisation has been awarded £15,000 for an arts project that will tell the "hidden history" of mill workers with learning disabilities as part of Bradford City of Culture 2025.

Summat Creative, a community interest group based in Shipley, was granted the funding by Historic England as part of its History in the Making programme.

The project - entitled Through The Mill - supports young people to discover untold tales from history.

Co-director and lead artist Tim Curtis said: “It focuses on the overlooked history of people with a learning disability in Bradford who worked in its mills, largely in the 1800s and 1900s but all the way up to the present day."

He said the project would connect young people with learning disabilities to academics, researchers and artists.

“I just this week met someone who worked in a mill as late as 1995 who is going to be involved in our project,” Mr Curtis said.

The project will include 15 young people under 25 who will be encouraged to come up with their own creative responses to stories from Bradford’s archives.

Their work will then be included in a model of Moorside Mill, now Bradford Industrial Museum.

The workshops will start in January with the finished products unveiled in the autumn.

It is one of four projects to be awarded funding, including the Manningham Heritage Project, which will explore stories of Bangladeshi heritage in Bradford, Shipley Glen Tramway's accessible place marker scheme, and musical creation Shared Stories by Allstar Ents.

Mr Curtis said it was important to retell these stories not just for people with learning disabilities, but for everyone.

He said: “It’s not really something that’s obvious in history or in the body of novels, writing, artwork or poetry – it’s just not something that’s represented in our history. So, it’s a hidden history from mainstream people as well.

“We feel it’s really important as a place marker to register that people with learning disabilities have been alive all the way through history and this particular period – the span of the industrial revolution.”

Summat Creative has been making work with disabled young people for two and half years and was set up by Mr Curtis and Lucy Dix – who both have daughters with Down’s syndrome.

The organisation is also planning a Wyke dragon project for Bradford City of Culture 2025, in which young people will create and perform in a carnival parade on adapted tricycles.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.