Introduction

'Voices from the Factory Floor' is the fruit of an exciting project run by Women's Archive of Wales. Women's history has been neglected through the centuries and the Archive's aim is to raise awareness of women's history in Wales and to rescue and safeguard the sources of this history.

This is what this website offers, namely over 200 transcripts of interviews with women (and some men) who worked in the manufacturing industries in Wales between 1945 and 1975. During this period there were hundreds of large and small factories in Wales, producing all kinds of goods and employing thousands of women. By today the majority of these factories have closed. It was important that these workers' stories were recorded before it was too late.

About 208 different factories are represented in this project. Each speaker has her own individual and unique story to tell. It has been a pleasure and an honour to ensure that these memories are safeguarded for the future. In addition, c.400 photographs which illustrate the project have been collected and scanned.

The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, with further contributions from the Ashley Family Foundation, Unite and Community Union trade unions and members of the Archive. This enabled us to employ three Field Officers to gather material in north, south-west and south-east Wales and to train volunteers to help with the recording and transcribing.

The whole project, including the original interviews, the photographs and the transcriptions are deposited in the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

The Project Final Report (English) is available to read as a pdf and also as a full Bi-lingual Version.