BRADFORD’S Museums and Galleries Service will take a lead role in a major new national project to connect collections from across the UKs industrial heritage and make them more accessible to the public.

The Congruence Engine project is one of the five Towards a National Collection’s Discovery Projects, an ambitious £14.5m five-year initiative, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The Congruence Engine project will use the latest digital techniques to connect an unprecedented range of items from collections held in different locations, including Bradford’s own Textile Collection, bring them together to tell their stories and share their secrets with the wider public in museums, in publications and also online.

Digital researchers will work alongside professional and community historians and curators to link the history of textiles, energy and communications together in one place.

Piece of district's history comes to Bradford museum

It will use computational and AI techniques – including machine learning and natural language processing – to create and refine datasets, provide routes between records and digital objects such as scans and photographs opening up their role in the past for all to explore and enjoy.

The investigation is the largest of its kind to be undertaken to date, anywhere in the world. It extends across the UK, involving 15 universities and 63 heritage collections and institutions of different scales, with over 120 individual researchers and collaborators.

Bradford Museums and Galleries’ textile collection is designated as a ‘Collection of National Significance’ and is the most important collection of Worsted textiles in Europe. Items in the collection date back to the 1850s and include thousands of textile samples, photographs held in the Bradford Photo Archive, as well as machinery housed in the Bradford Industrial Museum.

Bradford was once known as the ‘Wool Capital of the World’ producing some of the finest worsted fabrics use to make tailored garments like suits.

As well as exploring the district’s early industrial heritage the project will also make connections with its more recent history including workers from the 1960s and 70s who came to the district mainly from Pakistan.

The project which also includes Saltaire World Heritage Education Association as one of the partners, will link Bradford’s textile collection with other textile collections as well as the wider industrial heritage of the whole of the UK.

Councillor Sarah Ferriby Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Healthy People and Places, said: “We’re delighted to be involved in the major national project to bring to life the nation’s rich industrial heritage. The textile collection held by our Museums and Galleries Service is second to none and this opportunity to link it with other collections around the UK will allow us to discover more about the district’s rich and varied past and open it up to the world.”

The University of Bradford has also been chosen as a partner in the Unpath’d Waters project, another of the Towards a National Collection’s Discovery Projects.