The Museum of Carpet is situated in the Grade II listed Stour Vale Mill. Built in 1855, Stour Vale was the first steam-powered carpet factory in Britain and kick started the transformation of the carpet industry from a hand-worked process to a mechanical enterprise.

This transformation was the inspiration behind local student, Paul Ditchburn’s latest project as part of the Interactive Media course at Kidderminster Academy. The project brief was provided by the Kidderminster Arts Festival, who challenged the students to create a time-lapse video exploring the Festivals theme of ‘Transformation’.

Paul, who is passionate about Lego, knew immediately that he wanted to recreate something from the town using the iconic bricks. “My initial idea was to build the entire town from Lego” he says “but I soon realised I didn’t have any where near the amount of bricks I would need to create it!”

Instead, Paul turned his attention to the towns main industry, carpet making. “The creation of the first carpet factory was the biggest transformation Kidderminster has ever had, so I focused on the the place where this had first started – Stour Vale Mill”.

Paul came into the Museum to research the structure and layout of the building using original maps, plans and photographs which are held within our archives. He then used these to sketch out plans for his own structure and got work on the construction! The painstaking building and filming process was carried out over 3 days, following which the footage was edited and sped up by 2200% to create the final film!

What a fantastic and unique way of celebrating the transformation of Kidderminster!

Many thanks to Paul for sharing the finished results with us!