Congruence Engine in action – an emergent editorial

Abstract

Do you have an interest in the history of the textiles industry?How might connecting museum collections and archives of many kinds help you to explore your interests?Textiles offers a way of holding together threads of a global British history, creating a focus which allows for connections of all kinds to be made. Connections between:• everyday working life and practices, living conditions, wages, and profit;• materials, patterns, and designs;• skills, machinery and innovation in production techniques;• the development of civic wealth, enslavement, and carbon;• forms of community, political organisation, resistance, mutual aid, and solidarity.We're looking to collaborate with people researching their family histories, or who are active in community history groups or who might be involved in research through volunteer roles:− You might already be exploring the connections between the transatlantic slave trade, cotton, and wealth, or mapping connections between West Africa, the Americas and Lancashire.− You might be researching a family history which has led you to textile worker ancestors, or be using archives to develop queer histories of mill workers or sites.− You might be interested in how expertise in textile production and design traditions were taken from South Asian, or you might be exploring what it was like to move to Manchester from Ireland, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Uganda, the Caribbean, Somalia or other parts of the world and start working in a mill.− You might be tracking the development of anti-racism activism and its connections to trade unionism in mills, or exploring how trade unionism changed over time, or how women's pay and conditions were fought for.− You might be interested in the changing production techniques and uses of different textile products.− Equally you may be interested in something else textiles-related that forges new links and opens up new historical understandings.