In my history class, we were assigned a project to create a museum exhibit about a topic from the industrial revolution. We were given documents we had to analyze and had to use them in a poster to explain and teach people about our topic. My groups topic was weaving.
The museum exhibit my group produced is about the spinning jenny and textile mills. The first source we used was called "The Woman Spinning." made by George Walker in 1814. This was a picture of two women and a young girl in a room with a spinning wheel. The motivation behind Walker's work was to show the role of women and that they were the ones to use the spinning wheels. Source number two was "An Engraving of a Spinning Jenny" by T.E. Nicholson in 1835. This was just a picture of a spinning jenny and was used to show people what a spinning jenny actually looked like. Source three is called "Power Looms at a Textile Mill." This was a picture of inside a textile mill. It shows what the inside of a factory looked like at the time and how crowded it was. "London's Rabid Growth 'Growth of the Cities'" was source four which was a graph of the population of London throughout the industrial revolution. The importance of this graph is to show that London was the first city to have a population of one million people. Source five was a short reading about hand spinning wool. It tells us about how before the revolution everyone had to hand spin but once the industrial revolution got going, nothing was done with hand work. This source was called "Effect of Losing Cottage Industry for Families" from 1794. The final source my group used was "John Almond's British Handloom" from 1771. This was just a picture of a British handloom to show what they looked like and how they were set up.
"Weaving a New World" is the title of our exhibit. We decided on this name because it already tells the viewer that the spinning wheel changed the weaving world completely. Before the industrial revolution people hand wove in their own cottages but once factories were starting to be used, there was no turning back and the weaving world was changed forever.
While someone is visiting our museum exhibit, I want them to learn and understand how weaving evolved throughout the industrial revolution and changed the world of weaving forever. Visitors should learn that weaving started as handwork in cottages and eventually ended up at power looms in textile mills. Also, they should be taught that only the women worked in the textile mills and on the looms.
One museum exhibit I visited was called "Not-So-Great Britain" which talked about both the negative and positive effects of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. I learned that over industrialization was taking place causing housing to be cheaper which lead to crowded and dirty places called slums that were home to thousands of homeless people. Along with cheap housing, Great Britain experienced financial problems along with the problem of pollution in their rivers.
"Devastation of Child Labor" was the title of another museum exhibit I visited. This taught me all about how so many young children were used for work during the industrial revolution. At one point, 49.9% of workers in cotton factories were under 10 years old. The reason for this was because poor parents had no choice but to send their young ones into work to help take care of their family.
Another museum exhibit I saw was "From Country sides to the Big City." Here I learned about how tranquil country sides evolved into busy cities during the industrial revolution. Transportation was a big part of this. Iron was used to make railroads and people started to use rivers for transportation. Coal was the main resource behind the cities because it was a vital source for energy.
The final exhibit was "Products of a Dark Time." The title right away told me that an important resource came from something that was not right. As I continued reading I realized that it was cotton that came from the work of slavery. During the industrial revolution cotton was a vital product for trade and the reason the US had so much of it was because of the disgusting things they were doing. They were forcing people to work for them as slaves. This exhibit taught me another negative thing that took place during the revolution.
The museum curator assignment did a lot to teach me about the industrial revolution. I didn't only learn about weaving, the topic I created an exhibit on, but I also learned about evolution, child labor, and positives and negatives in this time period. This assignment was extremely helpful and I am sure my classmates would agree.
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