Widnes is a town famous for its smell. This project seeks an olfactory perspective on the history an industrial town in the north-west UK where smell is a part of the rich heritage of chemical manufacturing. The town of Widnes was home to soap factories who, ironically, were responsible for making one place stink in the quest to encourage global populations to be cleaner and more fragrant.

Working with Catalyst Museum, this community-based project seeks to engage a local population to uncover the smells of their parents, grandparents and own lives and generate descriptive olfactory vocabularies for the future.

Using overlaid maps of Widnes at different periods in its history, we elicited smell stories from the past and the descriptive narratives of what smells were dominant at different periods of time.