Cinderloo Heritage Schools

The Cinderloo1821 Uprising took place almost 200 years ago, when 3,000 miners and families marched in protest at proposed pay cuts and increasing poverty.  They gathered at the cinderhills of Old Park in Dawley (now the Telford Forge Retail Park), where the protest culminated in conflict with the Shropshire Yeomanry.  Two men were shot dead with many injured, and one man, Thomas Palin, was hung for “felonious riot”.

As co-founder of Cinderloo1821 in 2018, I helped secure over £30k of public funding and have led many different events for people, community groups and schools to learn about the history around the Cinderloo Uprising.

These have included:

  • public workshops
  • heritage walks
  • talks and film showings
  • school projects

I worked in partnership with Participate Contemporary Artspace CIC creative practitioners, other artist partners, the Granville Boys and heritage specialists, local historians, and Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust.

Cinderloo1821 secured grant funding support in 2019 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England Heritage Schools to establish a schools education programme .  This enabled us to work with six primary schools in Telford so that over 370 pupils learnt about Cinderloo by taking part in a range of walks, film making, collage and other creative activities. I also developed a set of learning resources. We secured further funding to continue in 2020/21.

In addition, to building knowledge and skills in traditional subjects using creativity, children have learnt about empathy and the effectiveness of working together in teams. Many pupils and teachers have been amazed to learn that the historic events of Cinderloo happened on their doorstep, and this has helped to encourage stronger connections and pride in their local history. The video below shows some of the activities:

Read more about the Cinderloo Heritage Schools work here.