The Barnsley Museums Culture Companions have been re-creating paintings from our collections. See the artwork and videos

Culture Companions is a group for older people who experience social isolation and other barriers (such as bereavement, mental health, disability and poverty) to experiencing a full life.

The group meets weekly, calling Experience Barnsley Museum ‘our second home’, undertaking a large variety of creative and activities:

· Art and craft

· Heritage sessions

· Collection projects

· Poetry and music

· Filmmaking

· Museum trips

· Wellbeing activities

Activities are mostly themed around local heritage, the museum’s exhibitions and collections.

The group is safe, free and accessible.

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Charles Adolphus Williams, MBE (23 December 1927 – 2 September 2006) was an English professional footballer and one of the first black players in British football after the Second World War. Later he became Britain's first well-known black stand-up comedian.

This interview which is being shared online for the first was recorded in 1983 as part of the Second Sight: Talking Magazine. The second part of this episode is from the same digitised cassette and takes you on a tour of Cawthorne Victoria Jubilee Museum.

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We're celebrating International Women's Day 2026 with a selection of interviews from our collection featuring some recognisable Barnsley voices and others we'll introduce you to for the first time: Rita Britton, the Barnsley fashion icon, Dorothy Hyman the Olympic champion, 'Mrs Barnsley' Mel Dyke. Prof Selina Wray, Dana Kubick who designed tins for the Barnsley Canister company and Gail Haimes shares her memories of working at Slazengers.

These short clips are from much longer interviews which you can listen to here

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After a short break we're back with regular episodes in 2026 as we make more of our oral history interviews available online for the first time. It's been 21 years since Stan Richards passed away but he is still fondly remembered, this interview was recorded by John Kelly for the Second Sight magazine in 1983. You will hear more interviews from these tapes later in the series.

The second half of this episode pays tribute to Geoffrey Hutchinson who died in January 2025, without his hard work and dedication there probably wouldn't be a Maurice Dobson Museum and Heritage Centre here today. Geoff was the first chair of the museum and was responsible along with a small group of volunteers for the first National Lottery Heritage Funding in South Yorkshire. The interview is a longer version which featured in Memories of Maurice

Our next episode will be released in time for International Women's Day in March

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For our Christmas special this year we are taking you back to the 1980s, with a selection of clips from the Second Sight, a talking magazine for the blind and partially sighted that began in December 1982.

These cassette recordings will form the basis of our podcast in 2026 - Future episodes will feature interviews with Stan Richards and Ashley Jackson

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Welcome back to the Barnsley Museums Natters podcast, we're taking you back to the 1980s for the majority of this series and exploring a series of cassette tapes. Second Sight was a talking newspaper which launched in 1982, and for the first time these recordings are being shared online.

We begin with an interview with Dickie Bird, take a tour of the Mayor's parlour and hear from the then Mayor Ken Rispin as he and the mayoress look back on the mayoral year. There will be regular episodes of our podcast in 2026 featuring lots of archive interviews that are being shared online for the first time.

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There's lots of interviews online with Arthur Scargill that focus on his involvement in the miners strike. In this interview that pre-dates the strike John Kelly focuses on Arthur's formative years in Barnsley, his interests and influences away from the pit. This is the first time this interview has been shared online, it's from a recently digitised cassette tape from a Barnsley Archives collection.

Recorded in 1983 for the Second Sight magazine created especially for the blind and partially sighted, we are currently working through the collection and will share more interviews in the near future.

Download a transcript of the interview.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.