FORGE at The Museum of Cambridge
A Visitors’ Guide
IRONWORKS, the former Mill Road Depot site and once the Eagle Iron Foundry, being developed by Cambridge Investment Partnership (CIP), will provide new homes ranging from terraces and mews houses to apartment, including 50% of these being social rented council homes. It will provide a new community centre, along with open spaces including a new park with a neighbourhood play area.
Hilary Cox Condron is Artist in Residence at Ironworks, and Helen Weinstein is the Community Historian, they are working with residents, old and new, as this community grows. Celebrating the history and stories of Ironworks, Sturton Town and Mill Road, finding creative ways to help forge the community.
The FORGE exhibition presents a thought-provoking look and celebration of how the community has flourished through rediscovering and making new connections with local heritage, nature and traditions. FORGE will take you on a journey through the museum to explore artefacts from the past to the present-day. The display highlights how the revival and sharing of these traditions and crafts over the past year has given us hope and helped to inspire a kinder future.
As you begin your journey through the museum you will discover stories and people from Sturton Town, Mill Road and the Ironworks site. The sound track you can hear downstairs includes the Headly Steam Engine (now at The Museum of Technology), bin collections, birds, insects and chatter: transporting us to times past.
As you move through the kitchen and up stairs you will discover how so many lockdown experiences – of baking, growing, foraging, making and spending time in nature – have reconnected us to traditional skills and crafts and ways of living.
Upstairs in the dining room the Cabinet of Inspiration celebrates local stories of pioneering thought and social justice. as well as sharing inspirational images taken during the pandemic: the first Black Lives Matter demonstration on Parker’s Piece, rainbows in windows and the nature on our doorsteps.
You will see QR codes around the museum which link you to some of the Cambridge groups and initiatives exploring and developing these themes – from community farming and measuring your carbon footprint to exploring Cambridge’s Urban Forest and Cambridge Doughnut Economics.
Just hover your phone camera over the code and it will diect you to the website. Hilary is developing creative workshops exploring foraging, mending and the things we value in Cambridge, in collaboration with Herbalist Vanessa Neville, Circular Cambridge and Cambridge Doughnut. Please email hilarycoxcondron@gmail.com. And follow the facebook page @ResonanceCam
Your feedback and comments will help FORGE continue to evolve. As you leave the exhibition downstairs you will see a yellow post box, next to the bike that belonged to Joseph Sturton – the Victorian developer who built Sturton Town (he must have been very tall). Please fill in one of the feedback forms and post it in the box.
We’d love to hear from you.
resonance-cambridge.co.uk/forge
www.museumofcambridge.org.uk
www.ironworks-cambridge.co.uk
Cambridge Investment Partnership (CIP), established in January 2017, is an equal partnership between Cambridge City Council and Hill Investment Partnerships. It will support the council in the delivery of 500 new affordable homes across the City by developing council-owned land and other sites. The CIP model allows the joint investment of land, funding and professional expertise in housing and mixed-use development. Cambridge City Council is focusing on opportunities to deliver council-owned and managed houses on existing land assets.
www.hill.co.uk
www.cambridge.gov.uk
