For this assignment, we were divided into groups and each group got a major category of the ways that the Industrial Revolution changed the ways people lived and worked, and the products that were bought and sold. Among those categories, each group was given six sources to analyze and make placards to describe each source. For each group, placards lay under the each source, the proper citation comes along with the, put all of the sources in correct order, create a title, display them out, and a museum has now been created up on our school's fourth floor square area. Everyone became museum curators for each exhibit. A curator must be an expert in a topic, thoroughly analyze each exhibit's sources, determine what should be learned by visitors, arrange sources in an orderly way, provide citations, and provide placards with essential information with minimal text. The first step is analyzing each source. Each group member read a source and cited it and determined the main idea. This is one of if not the most important part of curating because finding out what the source is saying in our own words is what will be in the placards for the exhibit. Visitors will read the placards because visitors may not be able to completely understand the source like we do so accurate analysis is needed so the visitors can get the essential information. Our exhibit basically has six sources with placards analyzing the actual source. With the exception of one source being a document and another a chart of London's growth, our sources are all about spinning wheels for wool and thread. Our first source is the house spinning wheel which was used before the Industrial Revolution which were powered by people of all ages. The next source is the hand loom. This was a major innovation of the Almond spinning wheel which quickened the process of weaving thread and sparked the creation of the next source, a spinning jenny. It shows a wheel turning cotton to thread. This was step-up of the hand loom and it was created to keep up with the Almond loom. The fourth source is the power loom which was invented to speed up the weaving of cloth and was designed to be faster than an almond loom and keep up with spinning jenny. Source number five was a chart of London's increasing population throughout the Revolution. The reason for the population boost was new factories provided jobs for newcomers from the countryside. Lastly, a document explains how cities with factories had many newcomers moving, the newcomers families became more poor because factories only allowed men to work so a family only had one source of income. Families that had money lacked it when going to a city. Based on our sources, our group came up with title for the exhibit about how families were torn down. Our title as you can see was 'Building Industry Tearing Down Families'. We hope that visitors learn that while so many cities gained population by providing jobs and being able to establish trade and commerce, the families that moved there suffered because of the factories' procedures. While the cites were gaining business and wealth, the families were losing wealth and being torn apart.
There were many new things I learned form other exhibits like with transportation, relying on river currents and wind or relying on flat terrain for travel wasn't necessary while at the same time children were being used to help power factories and help the industry, their own lives were enslaved and could not live a life they had dreamed of. I also learned that slavery increased rapidly as the Industrial Revolution continued especially in the south which could very well play a role in the fact that people's living conditions were becoming unfit and unhealthy and pollution from all of the smoke from the factories, and enslaving children did not contribute to as healthy start.
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