Invisible Histories was the Library‘s first oral history project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It ran from summer 2012 until early 2014.
The aim of the project was to capture a flavour of people’s working lives during the period when Salford was a major industrial powerhouse in the North West – evidence for which is now almost completely gone.
The project focused on interviewing people who worked at three representative Salford workplaces:
Agecroft Colliery 
Credit: Salford Local History Library
Ward & Goldstone (an engineering factory)
Credit: Salford Local History Library
Richard Haworth’s cotton mill
Credit: Salford Local History Library
The Library was also very aware of the need not just to record these interviews, but to find ways to bring them to a wider audience. Inspired by Ewan’s MacColl’s innovative 1950s Radio Ballads, one of the ways we kept these memories alive was through working with students from Buile Hill Visual Arts College to produce a modern version of a Radio Ballad, using extracts from our interviews.
The project Web site is at https://invisiblehistoriesproject.wordpress.com. The full interviews are available to listen to on the site. There are also summaries of the interviews (and in a few cases transcriptions).
