Bespoke Oral History Shoe – Wirksworth Heritage Centre

Located in Derbyshire, England, Wirksworth is a small market town with a rich history of mining, both limestone since the 19th Century and Lead since Roman Times. Wirksworth Heritage Centre helps to teach future generations the history of this town and its inhabitants from past to present. Having seen some fantastic success in doing so, winning the Sandford Award for Education. The Heritage Centre is also home to Webster’s Café, named after the family which owned the building for 150 years.

We worked with heritage interpretation consultancy inHeritage who commissioned memorable players as part of the project where they managed the oral histories and developed the exhibition.

The end result is definitely unqiue, visitors are invited to raise various objects such as a shoe or sweet jar lid to their ear to hear audio that automatically plays when said object is lifted. Taking the functions of our standard Heavy Duty Handset and applying it to a very unusual container.

The oral history items were all part of a limited exhibition, ‘Open All Hours’ was dedicated to the past and present businesses of Wirksworth and shares their story through objects, photos, videos, memories and even smells.