This weekend, the Senior Leeds Playhouse Youth Theatre is taking over Sunny Bank Mills with a site-specific performance inspired by the historical surroundings. The Youth Theatre has spent two terms considering the space, its purpose and what that means in today’s world. They recently visited our Museum & Archive to research for their forthcoming piece “Do you wanna know../Sewn through Time” set here at the Mills. One of their members has shared their thoughts on their experience….
‘We’ve been learning about the Mills for quite a while in our sessions at the [Leeds] Playhouse, but it was completely different to see it in the flesh. For one, the breadth of physical sources and history that the Mills has in its archives is amazing – samples of cloth all the way from the 1800s to the modern day, mill records with the signatures of weavers, fabric ends from production, clothes and images donated by the owners and much more.
We also had the privilege of listening to a selection of interviews taken from workers by the fantastic Rachel Moaby who showed us around and answered our questions. All in all, it was just brilliant to see a place like Sunny Bank [Mills] so well preserved – with many mill buildings demolished after their closing and so few places open in Yorkshire it’s really important to have places like this preserved. While many of us learn about our industrial history at school, it’s entirely different to have a living, breathing place where you can see the spaces where people worked, especially when it comes to documenting the lives of the everyday people whose community was both centred around and made the working of the mills possible.’
Leeds Playhouse Youth Theatre Member
The performances will take place on Saturday 29 March in the 1912 Mill here at Sunny Bank Mills.
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