The Big Pit Adventure

Published on 27.02.17

The first years have just started a new module that makes explicit the range of practice-based design methodologies that we use within the programme.  In this module, there is a mix of lectures, seminars, trips and lots of practical tasks where the students apply what they have learned.  As part of this module, and to

The first years have just started a new module that makes explicit the range of practice-based design methodologies that we use within the programme.  In this module, there is a mix of lectures, seminars, trips and lots of practical tasks where the students apply what they have learned.  As part of this module, and to demonstrate how from one starting point, an enormous range of ideas can be generated, we all went to Big Pit – the National Mining Museum for the day.

During the day:

We saw a whole cage of canaries and learned about gas and carbon monoxide and fires; We looked at some of the details of cogs and machines; We noticed the shafts of light coming through the broken, corrugated iron rooftops; We were very lucky that the museum’s forge was working and we met one of the blacksmiths who had worked as an industrial forger in a range of pits in South Wales for fifty years of his working life; We talked to some of the staff who were miners, who told us lots of stories about working in small seams, the camaraderie of working in a pit; We looked at everything in the museum from miner’s tags, gas lamps, tools and picks and saw lots of political images of pit banners and the strike’s anti-Thatcher marches.

All of which have enormous potential as a starting point to generate ideas for a body of work – a good day..