Industrial archaeology is one of the ways to understand our former collective self, and the way to understand us as inheritors of it. Mankind is faced incessantly with a growing number of choices, some of them seemingly fatal in consequences. Can't we learn some from the past? Knowing oneself is by definition a source of some pride. A devastated community which was flourishing, rich town in the industrial past has a value to enjoy and share. We always live partly in our past, and it is our past that often decides upon our present. So, this little community that was once a mighty mining complex, can retain some of the former glory and retain some dignity and nobleness form a glorious past, be that by some superlatives or major catastrophes in the mine. All counts.
An insight into a once flourishing own textile industry or that of ceramics, or that of machines is a form of right, right to a certain memory, right to its contents, right to re-vitalisation, right to inspirational force of it, - the same way a river that regains it past bed has a certain right to it. That right to certain experience is also a right to inspiration and know how, - a source of a great potential for the present and future. Traditions, I believe, leave even genetic traces, let alone cultural ones. Identity obliges! What a chance for bringing back some form of life to what has almost disappeared and yet it never does! That right to certain tradition is also a well-founded ability to re-vitalize in some appropriate form and responding to some contemporary needs, - what is so often regarded as lost and useless.