Culture And Memory

Slawit Shop and Moonraking

A 17-month programme of participatory community heritage activities, researching, archiving, interpreting and celebrating local histories in the West Yorkshire village of Slaithwaite. Slawit SHOP will mark two anniversaries, 40 years of Slaithwaite Moonraking Festival (SMF) in February 2025 (an extraordinary community light-festival based on a local legend) and 100 years of Slaithwaite’s Carr Lane central parade of shops. These anniversaries will bring people together, with shops and shopping as a theme for our programme exploring changing social and economic history. We aim to conserve and revitalise our heritage through multi-generational learning activities, developing skills and increasing capacity to sustain heritage of local traditions and stories. Our legacy will include skilled community history researchers - innovative creative heritage resources - improved SMF organisational sustainability/partnerships - preserving traditional craft skills - a digitised, accessible SMF archive - a new, digitised village shop archive - improved village pride, profile, economy and community cohesion.