Curating and Viewing Museum Exhibits on the Industrial Revolution

Our exhibit titled "All Work, No Play"

For the past week, we have been creating museum exhibits about the Industrial Revolution. Each exhibit detailed a certain topic of the Industrial Revolution. Some of these topics included child labor, pollution and the steam engine. The following is a recap of the exhibit my group did, as well as some observations on the other exhibits.

My groups exhibit was on child labor in factories during the Industrial Revolution. Our exhibit had six sources, three images, two documents, and a chart. The image in the top left is a depiction of children in coal mines. It depicts how one child would pull a cart of coal like a horse, while two other children would push it from behind. The image in the top right shows two boys working in a factory. They are positioned on top of a combing machine. The image in the center depicts a similar scene to the image in the top left, showing how children would work similarly to animals in coal mines. These three images all share the same message that children did not work under safe conditions during the Industrial Revolution. The chart in the middle shows the age distribution of children who worked in factories during the Industrial Revolution. It is shocking to see that primarily young kids, anywhere from 8 to 13, made up the majority of the children working in these factories. The document on the left is the Factory Act. This law was passed in 1833 in the UK to put a limitation on child labor. It stated that children under 18 were not allowed to work at night, were required to be educated, and could only work limited hours. This helped many of the children in these factories, as many of them were tired and overworked from such long days at work. The document on the right is titled "Observations of Young Bobbin Girls." In this document, the author noted how twenty or so girls worked frivolously without any adult supervision. We titled our exhibit "All Work, No Play" to emphasize how during the Industrial Revolution, children were constantly working, often in poor conditions. Our title takes this idea by inferring that children were constantly working, and had no time to enjoy themselves and play. The goal of our exhibit is to show anyone viewing it that children worked in awful conditions, and often worked over 12 hour days. We want viewers to understand how absurd it was to have children working so long and hard just to support their poor families.

The following is observations made on the exhibits made by other groups in the class:

Pollution: The Industrial Revolution introduced many new inventions that would lead the making human tasks more efficient. Unfortunately, with the innovation came pollution. More and more land was being use for factories, threatening the wildlife. Rivers would be polluted to the point where they would look brown.

The Steam Engine: The steam engine was a major stepping stone during the Industrial Revolution. It improved transportation and the production of many materials. Areas in the UK became designated for the resources they have, like coal, iron and lumber.

Weaving and the Spinning Jenny: Prior to the Spinning Jenny, wool products would be created by hand. However, when John Almond created the hand loom, production of wool products increased drastically, and some weavers were out of jobs.

Slavery: Slavery played a major role in the Industrial Revolution. A majority of the slaves were used in the cotton industry, whether it be harvesting it or working in the factories. As the slave population grew over time, so did the production in the factories, as they had more and more employees working for bare minimum to no pay.

Overall, the exhibits created taught a lot about the Industrial Revolution. They showed how it took a major step in the right direction in terms of production in efficiency. However, there were also negatives to the Industrial Revolution as well, and they balanced out the great innovation the revolution brought to the table.