After being involved at the end of 2025 in the BBC Radio 4 documentary Bolton: The Happiest Town on Earth?, we were equally pleased to hear from BBC North West who were keen to find out more about Mass Observation and the Happiness Survey that was a subject of the radio programme.
After exchanging a few emails to plan a day’s filming, LfW’s Julia Uttley met reporter Yunus Mulla and Tim his cameraman at the Bolton Central Library and Museum where we then met with Matthew Watson, Museum Access Officer. The plan was to interview Matthew about the Mass Observation archives that the museum holds, including of course the insightful photographs taken by Humphrey Spender at that time.
Matthew first took us into the library and museum vaults, where the archive is stored. Yunus and Tim outlined to Matthew how the interview would flow . . .
. . .and then filming began.
Matthew had selected a few photographs that were important in the collection and taken about one in particular that shoes workers leaving Flash Mill at the end of the day.
You can view this image in the online Mass Observation gallery of Spender’s photographs here.
He also spoke about the fact that the Bolton-based MO team, while commissioned to publish four books from their research, they only managed to get one into print, titled ‘The Pub and the People”.
We then moved upstairs into area of the museum dedicated to displaying Spender’s photographs and other items related to Mass Observation.
Again, after a bit of quick planning, the second part of the interview continued.
Once Yunus and Tim were happy with everything they had filmed with Matthew, we went to the Three Crowns pub in the town centre, as an example of a pub around at the time of the Mass Observation. They interviewed Julia Uttley there on the recent Worktown Revisited project that Live from Worktown ran in 2024 where we encouraged people who live in Bolton to participate in the national MO Diary Day on May 12th and to complete a short questionnaire on their thoughts about arts and culture in Bolton, important as Bolton’s year of being the Greater Manchester Town of Culture had just commenced.
We said our goodbyes outside the Three Crowns as Yunus and Tim were off for their final interview of the day with a Bolton resident who has links to the Happiness Survey.
You can watch the BBC North West article here.