Live oral testimony ‘darn pit’: dynamic, non-extractive oral histories of extractive work in the South Yorkshire Coalfield

A long-standing consensus among scholars and museum professionals asserts that the inclusion of oral testimony in museum spaces is desirable. This article briefly overviews the attempts made hitherto to include oral testimonies as part of the offer at European industrial museums and heritage sites and asks if there is a museal model more adept at establishing meaningful dialogue between historical actors and museum visitors, less mediated by the agendas and assumptions of museum managements. It finds exemplary the model of employing former coal miners as tour guides, used at the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, England, exploring the ways in which this model centres former industrial workers in the retelling of their collective pasts.