Revoultionary Learning Experience

Our history class was assigned a project to create posters about the Industrial Revolution. We were split was into five different groups, each one covering a different topic. Our teacher gave us documents to analyze and use to create a poster.  We would then use the poster to teach other classmates about our topic. I was in a group with four other girls and our topic was about slavery during the Industrial revolution.

This is an image of my groups poster.

My project group was assigned the topic, how slavery contributed to the Industrial Revolution. There were five documents that we used to analyze our topic. The first document was a map of the British Cotton trade in 1850. This picture showed the cotton trade routes and countries’ exports and imports. Raw cotton was being imported to England from America and finished cotton cloth was being exported out. This wraps into the idea that without slaves there would be no cotton picked to import into England, which means they cannot export cotton cloth to other countries for revenue. The second document was “Colonialism, slavery and the Industrial Revolution,” from a teaching kit. This image was very powerful because it depicted an hour glass with slaves doing back wrenching work and the results of all their hard work is going right into the mills. The slaves did not get anything in return; the mill owners collected all the money even though they did not do anything. Source three was an image of the Boott Cotton Mill, 1850. The image simply showed what the mills looked like in the time period. Source four was a graph showing the U.S slavery statistics from 1770 through 1860. The importance of the graph was that it showed the drastic increase of slavery during this time period. The last document my group had to analyze was an Arkwright water frame, created by Sir Richard Arkwright. The water frame was instrumental in creating mass produced yarn which created the demand for raw cotton.

Image of the text on my groups poster.

The title of our exhibit is “Behind the Scenes.” We decided to name our project this because we thought it reflected the idea that the slaves did the unseen work and were not rewarded. This idea was inspired by play productions because the show would not be complete if there weren’t behind the scenes people working the lights and curtains. When someone is visiting our museum exhibit, I want them to read and understand the topic we had. I want them to understand that slaves had a huge impact on the Industrial revolution and that it wasn’t just the people in the mills that were part of the cotton production.

I visited many exhibits for the museum curator project. One exhibit I visited was called “Stolen Child.” This exhibit taught me all about child labor during the Industrial Revolution. I learned that almost 50% of children started working before the age of ten. Another exhibit I viewed was, “Not-So- Great- Britain.” This exhibit talks about the good and bad that happened during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. I learned that many workers live in slums that were very crowded, dirty with horrible living conditions. The slums were the result of the over industrialization and cheap housing. A third exhibit I visited was, “America Runs on Steam Engines.” The exhibit talked about how steam engines improved the quality of life. Transportation was a big part of the Industrial Revolution because it allowed the things in the world to be more efficient.  Steam engines were some of the new inventions and advancements which helped create our modern world. The final exhibit I visited was, “Weaving A New World.” From this exhibit I learned that weaving was originally done in people’s homes.  The industrial revolution created huge mills full of looms run exclusively by women. The museum curator project taught me a great deal about the Industrial Revolution.