Touring Exhibition 'From Making to Moving'


Ford Transition: From Making to Moving
  
Exhibition at

Eastleigh Museum
Market Street, Eastleigh SO50 5LF

29 June – 20 September 2019

 “I’ve been away, come back and the building has gone.
So, it’s the phoenix story, isn’t it? Out of the ashes – rebuild.”

When the Ford Transit Assembly Plant in Swaythling, Southampton closed down in 2013, it brought to an end over 70 years of manufacturing history at the Wide Lane site. In its place today stands a high-tech logistics business park.

From Making to Moving tells this story of transition – from building planes, helicopters and vans to shifting goods – through the voices of the men and women who worked there.

Personal memories and reflections give a glimpse into the conditions, atmosphere, camaraderie and banter on the production line. Accompanying films present the wider story of the site’s history – from its wartime role when Cunliffe Owen built aircraft, through the heyday of iconic ‘white van’ Ford Transits, to the current Mountpark business park.

The exhibition was produced during the Heritage Lottery Funded community project, Transition: from fields to Ford and beyond, and draws on oral history interviews recorded in 2013 and 2017. 

Previously showcased in a week-long pop-up museum housed in shipping containers on the former Ford site in April 2018, this touring version is on display at Eastleigh Museum until Friday 20th September 2019.

Website: www.fordtransition.org.uk    









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ford Transition Pop-up Museum (3rd - 9th April 2018)

Image
Ford Transition Pop-up Museum Tuesday 3rd - Monday 9th April 2018 Venue: Ford Vehicle Repair Centre, Swaythling, Southampton SO18 2NQ Free Entry. Booking essential Book at www.ticketsource.co.uk/ford-transition  The story of one industrial site's transition from making to moving as told through the voices of the men and women who worked there. The sights, sounds and voices trace the site's evolving manufacturing history from WW2 aviation to the production of the iconic 'white van' Transit, and its current transformation into a high-tech logistics park.  Come and find out about what it was like to work on the production line of a busy factory.   Open for one week only, the pop-up museum also offers a rare chance to see the last Transit van to be made in Southampton & signed by those who built it.   Over the past year, TRANSITION: from fields to Ford and beyond , a community history project funded by the Heritage Lotter...
Read more

Who bombed Cunliffe Owen? The intriguing story of the bombing in 1940 of the aircraft factory in Southampton

Image
Andy Jones, former director at Solent Sky Museum, Southampton, kept the audience at our memory sharing café enthralled as he shared the results of his research into the bombing of Cunliffe Owen during the Second World War. On 11 th September 1940 the factory took a direct hit from German bombers and 52 people lost their lives. It is a lesser-known story than the bombing of the Supermarine later that month and one that our project has been exploring through the memories of Helen, whose father was one of those killed. Andy and his team have been researching the story for a film due to be broadcast later this month and which looks at the mystery of a German bomber known to have been inside the factory at the time of the bombing. Andy showed photographs of the Heinkel at the factory taken before and after the raid and explained his efforts to identify the plane and through it find out more about its journey to Southampton. He has since pieced together the plane’...
Read more

Flying wheelchairs, wi-fi clothes, cancer cures and world peace – Life in 2067 as imagined by young people

Image
‘Bubble-powered rocket boots’, ‘teleporting devices’, ‘talking animals’ – just some of the future innovations as imagined by Year 6 pupils at Mansbridge Primary School at a session led by the Ford Transition project team and volunteers. It was the culmination of a series of workshops in which the children explored the history of the former Ford site and their thoughts and views on living in Mansbridge and Swaythling. In earlier sessions the children had studied archival resources such maps, documents, news cuttings and oral history quotes to look at how the site had changed over time – from fields to the Cunliffe-Owen aircraft factory during the Second World War, and then Ford Transit van production to the rapidly transforming new site today. They brushed up on their skills of asking questions, active listening and engaging with older people in a reminiscence context. So they were fully prepared and eager to find out more when they visited a local sheltered housing block and met olde...
Read more