Threads of Labour

How did Britain’s industrial decline reshape the lives, identities, and bodies of the working class? What political, social, and emotional legacies continue to ripple through post-industrial communities today—and how does gender inflect these lived experiences?

In her powerful new book, Threads of Labour: Tapestry of an Ex-Industrial Community, Dr Lisa Taylor returns to Bailiff Bridge, the West Yorkshire carpet town where she grew up, to explore how deindustrialisation was felt, remembered, and reimagined by its residents. Drawing on a bold collaborative arts-based project with former mill workers and newer arrivals, Taylor’s work is both a moving act of community engagement and a vital reappraisal of Britain’s industrial story.

Threads of Labour reveals how nostalgia for lost industries is not merely emotional but embodied—a political force that speaks not only to what has been lost, but to what is still possible. Taylor redefines nostalgia as a critical and creative impulse: a call to rethink the present and to remake community from the threads of shared memory and labour.

Dr Lisa Taylor is Reader in Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University. Her work on the ‘Landscapes of Loss: Revaluing Labour, Remaking Community ’ project—funded by an ISRF Mid-Career Fellowship—brought together a former textiles community and artist Catherine Bertola in an innovative reflection on heritage and belonging.

Joining Lisa for this discussion are:

• Mike Makin-Waite, former ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow and author of On Burnley Road
• Tim Strangleman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent and author of Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery
• Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita, Cardiff University, and co-author of Rethinking Community Research

The conversation will conclude with a Q&A moderated by Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Coordinator.