The Making and Re-Making of Port-Sunlight. Studying a Community in Flux: A Sense of Time and Place

Port Sunlight was founded in 1888 as a model workers' village to house employees of the Lever Brothers' soap factory (then also headquartered there). Located on the Wirral Peninsula - and home to a residential site, a major art gallery, a theatre, a museum, and over 900 listed buildings - Port Sunlight represents a fascinating historical social experiment in corporate-commissioned industrial housing that is today a village-style community of circa 2000 people.

The project is an empirically-grounded, theoretically-informed study of how Port Sunlight Village was conceived of by its founder, subsequently visualised by cultural professionals (such as photographers, architects, planners), and contemporary residents and visitors. This project is also interested to capture the contemporary animation of the major social changes underway in this community.

Research is likely to address the following three areas:
1. Archival Analysis of the plans, photographs, drawings, models and maps of the village that will reveal some of the ways in which the social space has been imagined/re-imagined over time. The researcher will curate a public exhibition of their work at Port Sunlight Museum;
2. A policy analysis of the recently-authored Port Sunlight Village Trust's Strategic Plan, in a period when crucial decisions concerning the future of the village will be made. Analysis will focus on the practical politics of decision-making with respect to space;
3. An in-depth ethnographic study of the public realm of the village, including considerations of the effects of different time periods on the past, present and future of the place and its people