George Orwell travelled across Britain documenting austerity and its affects in British cities, including Birmingham, as part of his Journey to Wigan Pier (Photographs: Adam Yosef/Public Domain)
The Daily Mirror’s Real Britain column is embarking on a year-long project, recreating George Orwell’s iconic The Road to Wigan Pier journey, which began in Birmingham.
Just like Orwell, writers Ros Wynne-Jones and Claire Donnelly are going to visit towns and cities across the UK to see how people are living and coping with austerity.
The duo are going to document the journey in the Daily Mirror and via a new digital platform throughout the year and are calling on people to share their stories and tell us about the challenges they are facing – poverty, benefit cuts, zero hours contracts, access to health care, homelessness and food banks, community cohesion and unity in the face of social struggles; and fighting back.
The Daily Mirror’s ‘Real Britain’ columnist Ros Wynne-Jones will be travelling across the UK, retracing the famous journey made by George Orwell in 1936
The team are also inviting people to send in stories, pictures and film, and are also looking to go out to meet and interview people too during their travels across the country.
The project starts, like Orwell, with a launch visit to Birmingham and Brummies are needed to be a part of the initiative.
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The Wigan Pier Project
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80 years after George Orwell set off on The Road to Wigan Pier, The Wigan Pier Project is recreating his journey using 21st century technology.
Throughout the anniversary year, the project will bring you stories from all along the route – covering Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Barnsley, Sheffield and Wigan and the places in-between– and, most importantly, allow other people to share theirs.
The Orwell public house at Wigan Pier in England (Photograph: Rept0n1x/Wikimedia Commons)
In 1937, Orwell’s famous book exposed to middle class England the levels of poverty in which huge industrialised swathes of people in the north of the country were living in.
He lived above a tripe shop and in various lodgings, including hostels across the country, attempted to live on working men’s wages and heard testimonies about the Means Test. He experienced the grim conditions, poor food and back-to-back homes of miners and factory workers. He went to listen to Oswald Mosley prey upon people’s fears about immigration and lambasted bearded Communist fruit-juice drinkers.
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Retracing Orwell’s steps in contemporary Britain
The Daily Mirror will be exploring austerity and its affects in cities across the UK including Birmingham, looking at social struggles and social action (Photograph: Paul Wheeler)
In 2017, the Daily Mirror will tell modern stories of working and unemployed poverty through a regular series in the newspaper and also a special anniversary website.
They will bring you the human stories behind the housing crisis, welfare cuts, the ‘gig economy’, the refugee crisis, and Brexit Britain, and take you behind the doors of foodbanks, homeless shelters, factories, churches, mosques, hospitals and private rented and social housing.
As well as these stories, the project will hear people from all along the route as they upload their own experiences and speak for themselves.
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What is the route?
The Wigan Pier Project, journey, which emulates George Orwell’s ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, will be launched in Birmingham (Photograph: Unsplash/Pixabay)
Birmingham, Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, Penkridge, Stafford, Hanley, Burslem, Eldon, Rudyard Lake, Macclesfield, Manchester, Wigan, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Middlesmoor, Barnsley, Mapplewell, Leeds.
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Who exactly was George Orwell?
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Born in 1903 as Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell took on his “good, round, English” writing name (after the River Orwell) to avoid embarrassing his well-to-do family when he had lived as a ‘tramp’ to write his previous book, Down And Out In Paris In London. After writing The Road to Wigan Pier, he went on to fight in the Spanish civil war.
He returned wounded before publishing his most famous works Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. To escape his sudden fame, Orwell then moved to the island of Jura, off the coast of Scotland. He died of TB in 1948 in London, aged just 46. After his first wife’s death, he married again in hospital three months before his death, to Sonia Brownell.
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How can I take part?
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If you live in Birmingham and have a story to share or want to be part of the launch event, please contact Real Britain via clairedonnellyfeatures@yahoo.co.uk.
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