Hearts of Coal - the project.

Music and songs have always played a big part in the life of mining communities. There are reports of miners – men and women – singing down the pit as they worked almost three hundred years ago. From the 1840’s onwards, Yorkshire newspapers reported colliers and their bands marching in procession at galas and demonstrations. And every element of the job – from pick sharpening and winding to the saying that more coal was mined in the bar at the Welfare than ever came out of the pit - has been captured in song. Hearts of Coal brings together these old and newer songs and combines them with local stories of mining communities to celebrate a unique way of life.