The transformative power of partnership

The Hat Works Museum in Stockport, the only museum dedicated to hat making and headwear in the UK, reopened in March following an extensive refurbishment, with new galleries and reinterpretation of its historic factory floor using animation and illustration to bring new stories to light.

Following its closure to the public in 2019, the museum’s team had to think of innovative ways to continue their connection with the public. 

This is how the Women + Archives collective came together, inspired by the commission of an animation for Hat Works’ reinterpreted factory floor gallery. The initial group was formed of the Hat Works museum officer Bronwen Simpson and staff from Manchester School of Art (MSoA), including animator Maisy Summer, researcher Bethany Turner-Pemberton and reader Ian Whadcock.

The group hosted an International Women’s Day symposium in March 2023, which aimed to share the work of creative practitioners working to investigate the role of “the woman” in Greater Manchester’s archives.

The event led to an ongoing collaboration and established a committed collective between the partnering institutions. The group’s recently concluded programme saw Women + Archives receive £5,000 in funding from Stockport: Town of Culture to host creative interventions exploring the question “how can creative collaborations from a living archive during times of transition in post-industrial areas?”.

The culmination of the programme was an exhibition, Stockport: Untold Stories, which showcased creative responses, photography and stories from public-facing workshops. Using Hat Works' site and collections as inspiration, the programme forms a living archive of sorts, capturing Stockport as a town of culture and celebrating the area as a place of heritage and contemporary culture. The four sessions were attended by 56 participants, and the exhibition drew 2,255 visitors over nine days.

While Women + Archives offered Hat Works an opportunity to engage with their audience during the closure of the museum, the ongoing collaboration has also become a valuable method of establishing new audiences. Through the collaboration, new networks of connection have formed, and visitors seeking participatory, creative activities and skill sharing sessions have been attracted to the museum.

Within MSoA’s research strand Design for Community and Heritage, Women + Archives has established interdisciplinary, cross-department and cross-institutional partnerships that emphasise the important role of the university in the lives of Greater Manchester’s residents. The partnership has established valuable external relationships that tangibly impact the region and contribute to important heritage-focused research within the School of Art.

For Turner-Pemberton, as an early career researcher, working within the non-hierarchical collective has provided experience in bid writing and project management that she would not typically have experienced within the more formalised roles of academia until later in her career.

The support and mentorship of the group reflects Women + Archive’s core value:  to ensure all voices are present and heard. This is evident within the structure of the collective, in the selection of workshop hosts, and in the public-facing programme. 

Women + Archives’ recent project has started conversations concerning how embedded public-facing community practice is within the museum and university’s working practice. As a collective, the group is now discussing what happens with these living archives and how to accurately and innovatively reflect, capture, and, where appropriate, collect the work developed during these programmes.

For Hat Works Museum, the collaboration allowed the museum to reflect on their offering as it prepared to reopen to the public. It helped the museum recognise what it has to offer to audiences and how it can work as a vehicle for change within the local community.

More than 20 years since it first opened in 2000, the museum is well positioned to welcome the public once again and is situated at the heart of Stockport’s cultural offering.

Bethany Turner-Pemberton is a researcher at Manchester School of Art, and Bronwen Simpson is museums officer at the Hat Works Museum