LEEDS.- Living with Machines is the first large-scale exhibition developed in partnership between the British Library and Leeds Museums & Galleries. The exhibition is inspired by the Living with Machines research project, a collaboration between the British Library, The Alan Turing Institute and five partner universities, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund. The project is developing new computational and historical methods for working with library collections at scale. Find out more on the Living with Machines project website.

From a potato peeler to an enormous textile loom, early examples of Leeds machinery sit alongside a diverse array of material including newspapers, paintings, workers’ protest ballads, propaganda and football ephemera. Items such as an early example of fast fashion - still in its original packaging - and the ground-breaking pattern marking machine which inspired hopes of a shorter working day, paint a relatable picture of society as advancing technology changed what it was to live and work in a fast-paced city. Contemporary responses, offering reflections on the parallels between mechanisation in the 19th century and advances in AI and digital technology – sometimes called “the fourth industrial revolution” – are woven throughout the display.

Living with Machines is the first large-scale exhibition developed in partnership between the British Library and Leeds Museums & Galleries. The exhibition is inspired by the Living with Machines research project, a collaboration between the British Library, The Alan Turing Institute and five partner universities, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund. The project is developing new computational and historical methods for working with library collections at scale. Find out more on the Living with Machines project website.

The exhibition marks a key milestone in the British Library’s ongoing work with local partners and communities to develop a programme of cultural and learning activities in West Yorkshire, including the current display Desire Lines by Jill McKnight at Leeds Art Gallery until October 2022. The British Library is one of the major partners for next year’s Leeds 2023 festival.

Objects on display include:

• A fully restored working dobby loom, over 3metres high and 2metres long, from the early 1900s - lent by Edwin Woodhouse & Co Ltd, Sunny Bank Mills. The loom will be operated by local textile artist Agnis Smallwood, who will weave a bespoke cloth during the exhibition’s run

• A page proof of Hard Times containing Charles Dickens’s handwritten corrections to a description of “Coketown”, on loan from the British Library

• A guard’s clock from London & Birmingham Railway– designed to carry newly standardised time, necessitated by the surge in rail travel and timetabling, across the country - on loan from the National Railway Museum

• A ready-to-wear child’s 3-piece suit produced in Leeds in the 1880s: unworn and still taped up, it is an early example of mass produced clothing, showing the transition away from bespoke hand-made garments to “fast fashion”




• A hammer shaft, originally belonging to a cog filer working in Leeds, upon which the wood has been worn into the shape of his hand

• Workers’ protest ballads, some of which are the only surviving copies, on loan from the British Library, displayed alongside a bespoke audio installation of the ballads put to original music and performed for the first time by Leeds-based folk musicians

• Two paintings by Stephen Lowry: The Mill Gates, on loan from Keele University Art Collection and Coming from the Mill, on loan from The Lowry Collection, Salford - displayed side by side for the first time

• A newly restored Leeds National Union of Railwaymen banner measuring over two metres squared, made of damask silk and featuring artwork in oil depicting workers and their families

• Postcards originally produced for the Dick Kerr International Ladies' A.F.C. football team, made up of employees of Dick Kerr and Company's Preston munitions works in the early 1900s - on loan from The National Football Museum. The team won seven trophies and raised over £70,000 for hospitals, families living in poverty and ex-servicemen

Living with Machines runs at Leeds City Museum from 29 July 2022 to 8 January 2023. The accompanying events programme includes loom weaving, crafts workshops, a Wiki edit-a-thon, and a special AI series as part of Leeds Digital Festival.

The Living with Machines research project is a 5 year collaboration between curators, data scientists, linguists, historians, other specialists and the public. Over 2,000 people have contributed to the project via crowdsourcing work, analysing how machines were reported on in historical newspapers from the British Library’s collection. The data they created helped shape the exhibition and future questions of the research project. The edit-a-thon event - taking place on 6 October – is a new opportunity for the public to get involved, by updating Wikipedia entries for historical figures and machines from Leeds to address gaps in the record uncovered during exhibition research.

John McGoldrick, co-curator of Living with Machines, and curator of industrial history at Leeds Museums & Galleries, said: “This has been a fascinating project to work on with colleagues at the British Library. It has been especially exciting to re-interpret some of our collections through the lens of the Living with Machines research project and its themes. In doing this research we have been able to bring to life and make relevant objects that, up to now, had kept their stories very close to their chest. The collaboration has helped us to re-affirm the relevance of our collections in telling the human stories of industry in Leeds.”

Mia Ridge, co-curator of Living with Machines, British Library lead for the Living with Machines research project, and digital curator at the British Library, said: “It’s been fascinating to look at the history of mechanisation, at a time when society is once again trying to understand what its new forms - AI, data science, machine learning, algorithms - mean for how we live and work. What’s emerged is that some questions – what should we embrace, what should we rethink? – haven’t changed. This exhibition is the result of so many layers of collaboration – between Living with Machines researchers, the British Library, The Alan Turing Institute, the public, and finally, between the British Library and Leeds Museums & Galleries. It’s packed with creative responses to mechanisation, alongside relatable human stories and machines that evoke times of change.”

Kenn Taylor, lead cultural producer at the British Library, said “It’s fitting to open this new exhibition in Leeds, one of our great industrial and technological cities. Together, the collections of the British Library and Leeds Museums & Galleries tell a rich and familiar story of how technology changed lives in the 19th century. This partnership the accompanying events programme are an exciting new step in our work to expand the Library’s culture and learning programme in West Yorkshire.”

Professor Ruth Ahnert, Principal Investigator on the Living with Machines project said: “There has never been a more relevant time to explore the impact of rapid technological change on people and society. The Living with Machines project, from which the exhibition arises, has been collaborative effort between data scientists, humanities scholars and the public – it’s exciting to see this exhibition come together to address many of the questions and topics uncovered in our research.”