(Black and White) A young woman with long dark hair wearing a polka-dot dress seated at a table on a vintage train.

Bringing the Rowntree Leisure Time Interviews to Life

Image of a man and two women on a boat with their backs to the camera, the women blowing a white cloth which is blowing in the wind. Image from the holiday pages in the Rowntree company’s Cocoa Works Magazine, Autumn 1962 (Source: The Rowntree Society)

We are excited to be working with writer, director and PhD researcher Rachel Feldberg and the Borthwick Institute for Archives on a new project to create innovative digital performances inspired by the mass-observation-style interviews which informed Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree’s seminal 1951 study English Life and Leisure.

The project, funded by a Jane Moody Scholarship from the Humanities Research Centre at the University of York, explored innovative ways of engaging online audiences with archive material in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

You can explore the Online Exhibition for the project HERE.

Support Us

Our work is enabled by grant funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. If you would like to make a financial donation to further support our work, it is easy to pay online (with or without Gift Aid) by clicking the link below. You can get in touch with us about other ways of giving via info@rowntreesociety.org.uk

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