Embroidery for Lockwood

Today we all got together as a group to design and create embroideries for the installation at Lockwood station.

Here are some embroideries I created, inspired by our I Spy on the Penistone Line game.

Taking Alex on the Train

Once we had our main I Spy game idea for the project, we decided it would be a good idea to test the idea out. We did this by taking Alex, age 5 (a relation to Jess) on the train and experimenting how interested he would be in playing a game of I Spy.
Alex lost interest in the game after about 20 minutes which led us to find other ways to keep him occupied such as pulling faces when in the tunnel as you can see your reflection and creating drawings of the train. He also didn’t understand or know what some things in the game were, meaning we should definitely include pictures of items. However, we also found this to be a good thing as it brings opportunities for parents to teach their children while on the train and can become a learning game.

Here are just a few pictures of our journey.

Group Train Ride

28th February - We decided to all have a trip on the Penistone Line together, all the way from Huddersfield to Sheffield and back.
On the way there we sat seperately and recorded in different ways our experience of the train journey.

On the train back, we then decided to sit together and make a mind map of our thoughts from the journey.



We then decided to make a list from Penistone to Huddersfield of all the interesting things we can see to then put into a game of eye spy.

Finally, our idea is to create large posters to put up at each station for children to look out for on the train. These posters will give children tasks to do and things to look out for at each station.







Visit to the Library

As a group we decided to visit the Huddersfield archives in our library to research into the history of the Penistone Line. Here are just a few quotes from a book and a newspaper article I found interesting.

THE STORY OF HUDDERSFIELD
Roy Brook
1968
The Trinity Press London

• ‘Little-borough Tunnel itself took over a thousand men four years to make and the route, which became the Manchester and Leeds Railway,’
• ‘Huddersfield had been by-passed, the idea of Standedge Tunnel was shelved and Cooper Bridge was the nearest station to the town.’
• ‘By 1842, Huddersfield passengers urged the Manchester and Leeds Railway to consider building a branch line to the town.’
• ‘The Company was not prepared to consider the more expensive project and their spokesman declared “Huddersfield is not worth stopping the engine for!”’
• ‘The Canal Company decided to support the venture and the Huddersfield and Manchester Railway and Canal Company was authorised, by Act of Parliament to raise the capital and build the line’
• ‘The first sod of the line from Penistone to Huddersfield was cut on 29^th August 1845 and this was to give a direct link from Huddersfield to Sheffield.’

I found it very interesting to learn how difficult it was to actually get the Penistone line up and running which made me think about whether it may still be in danger now.

After speaking to Rowena (contact from the Penistone Line Partnership) I learnt that there isn't much danger of the line closing now but more of a difficulty getting people to use it. As there is only one line for the train which means the trains are very irregular and can be up to an hours wait making less people want to catch the train. However, the train is not busy enough to give reason for a second track to be built.

This research gave me more of a reasoning to promote the Penistone Line in this project.

Groups

After sending a letter of application, it was announced what project we would take part in and who would be in our groups.
The Penistone Line group included Jessica Berry, Becca Rose, Zoe Hopgood and myself.
We discussed many things in our first meeting including our key strengths and weaknesses when working in a group and even organised the best meeting times for everyone. Our meeting times would be Wednesdays from 11:15 and Fridays from 12:15.
We then mind mapped what our ideas for this project may be...

Research into Previous Work

As the Penistone Line Partnership has worked with the university a lot in the past I decided to research into the work previous years have done on similar projects.




http://www.lynnebarker.co.uk/portfolio/dodworth-station-2/

Lynne Barker and a few other students were involved in Stitch the Line Project, just last year. Their project seemed to be based around a collaboration with Foxy Quilters, Dodworth to create Stitch the Line Quilts. During their project they also helped at an event, run by the Penistone Line Partnership to celebrate the launch of their new leaflet ’20 Fun Things to do on the Penistone Line’, by providing an opportunity for visitors to make Christmas decorations to decorate the Christmas train.
I think it would be interesting to collaborate with others and learn the skills they have rather than something just textiles based that I would already know about.

Visiting Lockwood Station

My tutor, a few people from class and I had a trip to Lockwood station to speak to Rowena Chantler (the community rail officer) about the Penistone Rail project. She was very helpful in giving information of what other projects had been done in the past, what contacts in the community she could give us and health and safety notes that I hadn't before thought about.

Here are just a few photos I took whilst there of potential places to exhibit work.