Please note this meeting will now be in Lecture Room at the Newcastle Lit & Phil.

Agenda

1. Welcome from the Chair
2. Apologies for Absence
3. Election of the Chair: Liz O’Donnell is standing for re-election
4. Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 7 September 2021
5. Sid Chaplin Prize 2022: This year’s prize will be awarded to Lucy Jameson (Durham University) for her essay, Pneumoconiosis and Social Class in Twentieth-Century County Durham Mining Communities. Grahame Chaplin will present the trophy
6. Secretary’s Report
7. Treasurer’s Report
8. Independent Assessor’s Report
9. Journal Editor’s Report
10 Elections
i Vice Chair – Kath Connolly
ii Secretary – David Connolly
iii Treasurer – Judith McSwaine
iv Committee: Brian Bennison, Pat Candon, John Charlton, Mike Greatbatch, Steve Grinter, Peter Nicklin, Wendy Palace, Rosie Serdiville, John Stirling, Win Stokes, Don Watson
11 Close of Meeting

Guest Speakers

Lucy Grimshaw (Northumbria University) and Lewis Mates (Durham University) will talk about Using Trade Union Banners for Education: The Case of the 1938 ‘Red’ Follonsby Miners’ Banner

This talk considers the use of trade union banners as tools for mainstream education in the context of the recent reclamation, recuperation, and re-articulation of industrial heritage taking place in localities in the former Durham coalfield, north-east England. It does so by focusing on the educational work undertaken by the Follonsby Miner’s Banner Association in partnership with a local primary school.

It is divided into four substantive sections. The first locates our approach theoretically, primarily in the rich pedagogical literature, while the second briefly contextualizes the Association and the school. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with teachers and activists, it offers a chronology of a project that, catalysed by the replica Follonsby miners’ banner, developed spontaneously in several exciting directions.

These included the school developing its own miners’-style banner, unveiled by the late Tony Benn, who featured on it. The third section offers some wider observations about the educational partnership and then considers the specific challenges that the Follonsby banner’s iconography posed in terms of teaching and how these were overcome.

Finally, we discuss legacies and lessons, arguing that the wider impacts of the project went far beyond the specific learning experience they offered the children involved.