New Unlocking Collections Blog - Volunteers exploring shared Rochdale Archives

Unlocking Collections is a partnership project between Your Trust's Local Studies collection of local documents and the collections of the Co-operative Heritage Trust. Over the years, important documents and artefacts from the Borough and the UK Co-op movement 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. 

Rochdale Pioneers' Museum's 10 volunteers are working to conserve, document and digitise materials to 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. 

The 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 along with the journey and see what is uncovered! Read the blog on the Your Trust website.