Routed - Barnsley Museum and Heritage Trust

Exhibition and public realm interventions launching in 2021

A key focus for us between Summer 2020 and early Spring 2022 is Routed.  This large scale project, funded by Heritage Lottery is centred on gathering stories and memories from local people about life in Barnsley town centre. It is a celebratory project that has unearthed and shared the positive, upbeat and intriguing side of the town centre life. Despite the pandemic, we have reached out to the community through family, social and group networks to encourage people of all ages to share their stories and memories, enabling us to gather a rich and varied patchwork of the town centre’s social history.  Routed has a strong visual focus and we asked people to look at the town centre with fresh eyes and participate in the ‘My Barnsley’ single use camera activity.  We also identified ‘Faces of Barnsley’, and captured them with a series of stunning portrait photographs and documentation of their town centre stories and memories.

Routed culminates with an exhibition that is currently open at Experience Barnsley, it celebrates the gathered memories and stories through writing, illustration, objects, poetry, photography, music and sculpture.  The exhibition presents local and social heritage using contemporary design alongside eclectic visuals, and hopes to appeal to a diverse audience. A further outcome of the project is a series of contemporary artworks that will be placed around the town centre, again these have been inspired by shared memories. The artwork is due for installation in early 2022.

Routed has been delivered in partnership and collaboration with Barnsley Museum Heritage Trust.