Stepping Back in Time at the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery

On Thursday 19^th October, first year students studying BA Fashion Marketing at the University of Northampton visited the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery on Guildhall Road, as part of their Welcome Week at the university. The trip provided the students with a valuable insight into Northampton’s rich history in shoe making and was a great introduction to their degree course.

When the students first arrived they were given a tour of the museum’s galleries over three floors. There are a

variety of collections at the museum from social history, geology, archaeology and military history as well as fine and decorative arts. 

Of particular interest to the Fashion Marketing students was the museum’s large heritage shoe collection, the largest of its kind in the world. The students were fascinated by the vast array of shoes made in Northampton itself and from across the world. Studying the different designs close up, they compared how shoes have changed over decades of history and discovered shoe designs from the past that had inspired shoe designers of today.

After exploring the museum and art galleries, the students were privileged to be given an exclusive tour of the museum’s shoe store which contains thousands of shoes within its extensive archives. The students put on their protective gloves and got to work carefully searching through the shoe collections, just as many designers had done before them when visiting the shoe store for research.

The shoes in the archives ranged from huge trainers to tiny shoes made in China, from sparkly red knee-high boots featured in the Northamptonshire based film Kinky boots, to shoes made by students themselves from the University of Leicester.

At the end of their visit, the students went away with lots of ideas and photographs to write their own blog posts about the museum, with the potential for their blogs to be published on the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery’s own blog site.

The staff at the museum are extremely supportive of research and study and invited the students to visit the collections again at their leisure. They also offer volunteering opportunities for students to get involved with the organisation of upcoming collections and events. There was also a call for the students to donate their own shoes to be featured in the museum’s contemporary shoes display!

Overall, the trip was a fantastic opportunity for the Fashion Marketing students to learn first-hand about  Northampton’s shoe-making history and to discover a vast resource that is available for them to use throughout their studies.