My Experience as a Curator of the Industrial Revolution

I think the curating process was very beneficial in not only teaching us facts about the industrial revolution but also giving us a feeling of what life was actually like back then for the people that lived through it, whether it was the slaves who had to feed the growing demand for cotton or the children who worked all day in the mills or simply just people who worked at looms I feel like doing this project and viewing other groups made me realize how complex the industrial revolution was
from it's flashy exterior to it's rarely ever talked about dark side with the mills and the children that worked them.

Our exhibit was "A New Age is Looming Over the Horizon" Atticus came up with the idea rather out of the blue and we all instantly approved. Our sources for the project where a picture of a spinning jenny, a picture of a newly developed loom at the start of the revolution, a picture of the new looms being used in an American mill, a picture of a woman using one of these looms (depicting gender roles at that time) an article on how the industrial revolution impacted families, and a bar graph of London's rapid growth throughout the Industrial Revolution. we hope that viewers will take from our exhibit that such a simple invention like the loom can effect so much both positively by improving London's economy and negatively by effecting the dynamic of families during that time.

Something that I thought was very interesting that showed how the Industrial revolution benefited America and England was from the "Changes to life conditions due to the Industrial Revolution" exhibit which showed that the increase in factories led to the increase in good production which then not only raised the population because more people had access to better clothes and food in America and England then they could get in other countries but the individual wages of everyday workers were also raised due to the booming economy and the increase in productivity from machines like the steam engine and the loom. But not every statistic about the Industrial Revolution proved positive, another statistic from the "Unlawful Conditions, Dangerous Work spaces, and Mistreated Children"exhibit which showed that about 49% of child labor done in the mills in England and the US was done by children under 9 years of age.

These exhibits showed me that for every benefit that the Revolution had on modern day life like the world changing inventions, and the improvement of the world economy their was also a child that's life was consumed by the seemingly impossible labor put upon him by the revolution itself. Although it is clear that the impact the revolution had on the future is undeniable, the suffering of the children who lived during that time can't be forgotten.