Suburban Birmingham: spaces and places: 1880-1960

伯明翰郊区：空间和地点：1880-1960”是由伯明翰大学学者领导的一个研究项目，与伯明翰博物馆和艺术画廊的策展人、伯明翰图书馆和档案馆的档案管理员和图书管理员以及伯明翰大学特别馆藏合作。该团队将共同利用合作机构广泛收集的文件、图像和人工制品来研究和叙述伯明翰郊区的历史。正如其标题所示，该项目将重点关注郊区空间，从19世纪后期开始，伯明翰越来越多的居民在这里工作、休息和玩耍。研究人员将探索公共空间（如街道、广场、泳池、公园、会议厅）、半公共空间（如酒吧、俱乐部、音乐厅、商店、咖啡厅、分配地、礼拜场所）和私人空间（住宅和花园）是如何被建造、使用、思考的，并在80多年的社会、经济、政治和文化变革中表现出来。在为期两年半的项目结束时，该团队将向公众提供一个新的互动网站，该网站将包括一个VODcast纪录片，关于伯明翰郊区历史的文章，以及300张历史文件、绘画、照片、地图和人工制品的图像。这个创新的网站也可以在伯明翰博物馆和艺术画廊以及伯明翰大学特别收藏的展览空间向公众开放的关于伯明翰郊区历史的新展览中访问。伯明翰中央图书馆还将举办一个新的展览，在适当的时候，这个展览将在城市的社区图书馆巡回展出。为了纪念网站和展览的启动，伯明翰大学将为有兴趣了解更多伯明翰郊区空间和地方历史的公众举办一所走读学校。人们希望新的网站、展览和走读学校能引起公众的兴趣，并进一步研究英国第二大城市郊区广阔的历史意义。该项目的研究将由两个小组进行。每个团队将有一名来自伯明翰博物馆和艺术画廊的成员，一名来自伯明翰图书馆和档案馆的成员，还有一名来自伯明翰大学特别收藏的成员——所有人都与伯明翰大学的历史学家密切合作。合作机构在共同开展ahrc资助的合作研究方面拥有丰富的经验：伯明翰大学和伯明翰图书馆和档案馆开展了“连接历史”项目，并继续开展“伯明翰故事”项目（www.connectinghistories.org.uk）；伯明翰大学与伯明翰博物馆和艺术画廊合作办学3个博士学位，伯明翰大学与伯明翰图书馆和档案馆申请了6个博士学位；这三家机构都是合作伙伴，共同为2009年纪念“伯明翰之父”马修·博尔顿诞辰200周年而举办了一系列研讨会。然而，“伯明翰郊区：空间和场所”将是AHRC资助的第一次，它为策展人、档案管理员和图书管理员提供了比他们通常的工作安排更多的时间来专注于研究。这很重要，因为这些工作人员对伯明翰的历史和记录历史的城市收藏非常了解。该项目将使策展人、档案管理员和图书馆员能够相互分享他们的知识，通过研究来发展知识，并以创新的方式向伯明翰及其他地区的公众传播研究成果。在此过程中，合作伙伴通过合作产生杰出研究的能力将进一步提高，这对伯明翰历史的未来是一个好兆头。

Suburban Birmingham: spaces and places: 1880-1960' is a research project led by University of Birmingham academics working in partnership with curators from Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries, and archivists and librarians from Birmingham Libraries and Archives, and University of Birmingham Special Collections. Together, the team will use the partner institutions' extensive collections of documents, images, and artefacts to research and recount the history of Birmingham's suburbs. As its title suggests, the project will focus on the suburban spaces in which increasingly large numbers of Birmingham's inhabitants worked, rested, and played from the late-nineteenth century onwards. The researchers will explore how public spaces (e.g. streets, squares, lidos, parks, meeting halls), semi-public spaces (e.g. pubs, clubs, music halls, shops, cafés, allotments, places of worship), and private spaces (homes and gardens) were built, used, thought about, and represented over an 80 year period of great social, economic, political and cultural change. At the end of the two and a half year project, the team will make available to the public a new interactive website that will include a VODcast documentary film, articles about the history of Birmingham's suburbs, and 300 images of historical documents, paintings, photographs, maps, and artefacts. This innovative website will also be accessible in the new displays about the history of suburban Birmingham that will be opened to the public at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and at the University of Birmingham Special Collection's exhibition space. Birmingham Central Library will also host a new display that will, in due course, tour the city's Community Libraries. To mark the launch of the website and displays, University of Birmingham will hold a Day School for members of the public interested in learning more about the history of Birmingham's suburban spaces and places. It is hoped that the new website, displays, and the Day School will provoke public interest in, and further scholarly research on, the historical significance of the extensive, and previously under-studied, suburbs of Britain's second city.The project's research will be conducted by two teams. Each team will have one member from Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries, one from Birmingham Libraries and Archives, and one from University of Birmingham Special Collections - all working closely with University of Birmingham historians. The partner institutions have extensive experience of working on AHRC-funded collaborative research together: University of Birmingham and Birmingham Libraries and Archives ran the 'Connecting Histories' project and continue to work on 'Birmingham Stories' (www.connectinghistories.org.uk); University of Birmingham and Birmingham Museums and Art Galleries run 3 collaborative PhDs together, and University of Birmingham and Birmingham Libraries and Archives have applied for 6 more; all three institutions have been partners in a series of workshops held as part of their collective preparations to mark together the bicentenary of 'The Father of Birmingham', Matthew Boulton, in 2009. However, 'Suburban Birmingham: spaces and places' will be the first time that AHRC funding has afforded curators, archivists and librarians much more time to focus on research than their work schedules usually allow. This is important because such staff are enormously knowledgeable about Birmingham's history and the city's collections in which that history is recorded. The project will enable curators, archivists, and librarians to share their knowledge with one another, to develop it through research, and to communicate the results in innovative ways to the public of Birmingham and beyond. In the process, the partners' ability to produce outstanding research by working together will be further improved, boding well for the future of history in Birmingham.