Introducing Dig Where You Stand
A short video summarising the Dig Where You Stand mission and our work in the archives.
The Girl at the Atlas Gates
This short video reflects on the silent film that inspired the birth of Dig Where You Stand. Published in 1901, it provides a small glimpse of a Black girl standing among rowdy, playing children outside the gate of John Brown and Company's Atlas Works in Sheffield.
Staniforth Road - A Colonial Legacy
This short video considers the colonial legacy of a single road in Darnall, Sheffield. Staniforth Road takes its name from the prominent Staniforth family, who lived for many generations in the Darnall area. Thomas Staniforth was born in Darnall in 1735. He became rich through his commercial businesses, which include trading in enslaved people. He also had other businesses in Sheffield such as coal mining and farming. We know about Thomas Staniforth’s life and activities from his own diary, which you can take a look at yourself in Sheffield City Archives. Thomas Staniforth’s name appears on 79 slave trading voyages that took captive Africans to plantations in the Americas. He partnered with a Samuel Staniforth, likely his son, who profited from 13 slave-trading voyages. Each of these ships took hundreds of captive Africans to slave plantations in North America and the Caribbean.
Travelling Ayahs in Modern Britain with Dr Arunima Datta
In this short video, Dr Arunima Datta shares a brief history of travelling South Asian servants and nannies (or Ayahs) in Britain during the colonial period. This follows the discovery of a painting in Sheffield City Archives (c 1850s) by Margaret Scott Hicks, which shows the image of an unnamed Indian Ayah attending a young girl, Ada Hicks, in Sheffield.