About Us
About Revolutionary Players
Revolutionary Players of Industry and Innovation assembles materials from libraries, museums and archives across the West Midlands about the development of the Industrial Revolution and the significant individuals who contributed to it.
Prints, paintings, drawings, photographs of objects and buildings, letters, maps, plans and books have been digitised and linked together to increase historical understanding from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, broadly speaking, when the West Midlands was at the centre of the industrial world.
Creating Revolutionary Players
Revolutionary Players was created by the Project Manager Dr Malcolm Dick, the Director of the Centre for West Midlands History at the University of Birmingham, and Dr Kate Iles, Project Officer, within the Revolutionary Players Digitisation Project (January 2002 – May 2004). It included work with archives, libraries, museums, holders of private collections, researchers and content writers across the former counties of Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire in the English Midlands.
The project was initiated by The Libraries Partnership – West Midlands, which became part of Museums, Libraries and Archives – West Midlands in April 2003.
The Revolutionary Players Project was financed by the New Opportunities Fund, with National Lottery.
Revolutionary Players was re-financed and adopted by History West Midlands in 2015 and is now funded and published by History West Midlands Ltd.
Contributing Collections
Revolutionary Players was originally made possible with input from:
- Assay Office, Birmingham
- Bewdley Museum
- Broadfield House Glass Museum, Stourbridge
- Library of Birmingham
- Birmingham Archives and Heritage including the Archives of Soho Project
- Birmingham Museums including Soho House Museum
- Derby Museums and Art Gallery
- Erasmus Darwin House, Lichfield
- Medical History Unit, University of Birmingham
- National Gallery, London
- The Pen Museum, Birmingham
- Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum
- The Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Stoke on Trent
- Wolverhampton Museums and Art Gallery
Use of materials on this website
The website contains images of material held in different institutions. The location of each image is described on the site.
Images and contextual material can be used only for educational or research purposes without securing permission.
The title and location of the images, the author and title of any contextual piece and the name of the Revolutionary Players website (www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk) should be cited in any written work or publication.
Copyright permission MUST be obtained from the relevant institution/individual where images will be used for:
- another website, other electronic use or printed material
- commercial purposes
High-quality copies of the images can also be obtained from the copyright holder.
For more information, contact web@historywm.com
