Reframing Wentworth Woodhouse’s Untold Stories

Tuesday 27 January – Sunday 28 June, 10.00am–4.00pm

A new exhibition, Reframing Wentworth Woodhouse’s Untold Stories, brings together history, contemporary art and community voices to explore the lived experiences of working-class communities across South Yorkshire.

Part of artist Jennifer Vanderpool’s international Untold Stories series, the exhibition responds to the industrial histories of Sheffield and Rotherham, focusing on the social and cultural impacts of deindustrialisation. Through immersive visual artworks and filmed interviews with local community members, the exhibition makes visible the stories, labour and identities that are often overlooked in traditional heritage narratives.

Find out more about Reframing Wentworth Woodhouse’s Untold Stories.

Collaboration with Roots and Futures

Reframing Wentworth Woodhouse’s Untold Stories is a collaborative project between Jennifer Vanderpool and the University of Sheffield’s Roots and Futures programme, led by Professor Lizzy Craig-Atkins (School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities).

Roots and Futures coordinated and supported the interviews that form a major part of the exhibition, presented as a video installation alongside Vanderpool’s artworks. The project was shaped by shared research values and a commitment to ethical, place-based engagement, ensuring the exhibition responds to local interests and community needs. Drawing on materials from Sheffield archives, the exhibition weaves together art, research and oral history to address a need identified through Roots and Futures to make hidden and marginalised heritages more visible.

Community voices

The exhibition features interviews with community members from Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, conducted by Professor Lizzy Craig-Atkins and Dr Jennifer Vanderpool. Interviewees include:

• Dr Ryan Bramley
• Ethel Maqeda
• Pam Daniel
• Rob Cotterell
• Asia Wala

These interviews will be archived as part of both Jennifer Vanderpool’s Untold Stories project and the University of Sheffield’s Roots and Futures archive, ensuring long-term access to these shared histories.

About Roots and Futures

Roots and Futures is a collaborative research and engagement programme at the University of Sheffield that works with under-served communities across the Sheffield City Region to celebrate and share their stories. With over forty partners across local government, education, heritage, charity and community sectors, the programme has contributed to Sheffield’s Culture Strategy, supported community cohesion priorities and delivered heritage-focused events for more than five years.

About Untold Stories

Untold Stories is an ongoing international project by Jennifer Vanderpool, an artist and historian of working-class communities in the UK and USA. Her work combines historical research, found objects, archival materials and imagination to create what she describes as “imaginary-realism” compositions. Alongside visual artworks, exhibitions often include cultural objects, historic film clips and collaborative community engagement projects.

Running alongside the Wentworth Woodhouse exhibition, Untold Stories will also be presented at the Harley Gallery, Nottinghamshire - Bread and Roses - Welbeck's Untold Stories - exploring the impact of the loss of coal mining on local communities.

Funding and partners

The research and production of Reframing Wentworth Woodhouse’s Untold Stories were funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant and faculty development funds from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with additional support from the University of Sheffield.

Jennifer Vanderpool’s wider Untold Stories series has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council and DéPOT (Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2021, Jennifer was awarded a US–UK Fulbright Artist Fellowship to explore industrial histories in the north of England.