Recollecting the past in historic mines: Guido and the Big Pit

This paper draws on a comparative case study of the Big Pit National Coal Museum in Blaenavon, Wales and the Historic ‘Guido’ Coal Mine in Zabrze, Poland. I consider the role which mining museums play in the process of memory-work in terms of the recollection of past industry and also in the post-industrial restructuring process of mining regions. By discussing models of museological theory applied to the sites, I conceptualize mining museums as a potential resource where the industrial past meets its future and argue that the heritage interpretation and communication practice of these historic mines is remarkably people-based and therefore mining museums have a unique character in the contemporary ‘museumscape’ and ‘memoryscape’.