A GRANT of £17,000 has been awarded to Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) to fund research into reviving a project created to help unemployed East Cleveland miners in the 1930s.

The money from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art will fund an examination into the social improvement project that was called Boosbeck Industries.

Launched as part of work camps during the Great Depression, the aim was to help tackle high unemployment in former mining villages.

Wilfred Franks, former student of the German art school Bauhaus, worked with miners on creating furniture from bookshelves to benches. This led to furniture with a distinctive modernist style. A few original pieces can be seen at Ormesby Hall as part of its British art collection.

The aim of the work was to help miners develop new skills and find a way to make a living. The enterprise closed in 1936, having reignited a community and provided a new lease of life for many former miners.

The history of Boosbeck Industries and its links with more recent art practices will be researched by Middlesbrough artist and graduate of Teesside University Adam Clarke.

He said: “What inspires me about Boosbeck Industries is that it was set up as a creative way of addressing unemployment through the making of furniture. It gave people a sense of identity through craft and the work was truly ahead of its time.”

It is hoped to establish new workshop facilities to boost job prospects in the area by creating a contemporary production line based on the original furniture designs. Boosbeck Industries features in mima’s Localism exhibition, which runs until February 7.

Grants totalling £3,000 from other sources will be used in conjunction to develop ways to promote art as a tool for change, including looking at issues around refugees and asylum seekers experiences of displacement.