26 Treasures Unbound

A guest post by author and 26 Treasures writer Sara Sheridan

Last year at the V&A, the writers’ collective 26 did something extraordinary. We created (quite unknowingly) a new literary form. During London Design Week 26 of our writers responded to 26 objects in the British Galleries in exactly 62 words. We coined a name for this new literary form: a sestude, which is a reflective study in exactly 62 words. 62 by 26 – it was a great idea and it is no real surprise that the concept for the original 26 Treasures exhibition lent itself brilliantly in 2011 to other exhibitions around the UK. We’re delighted to say we’ve exhibited this year in the National Library of Wales, the Royal Ulster Museum and here in Scotland at the National Museum (which we’ve loved).

The Bute Mazer, suit of Ross tartan and a bowl from the St Ninian's Isle hoard: three of the 26 treasures on display at National Museum of Scotland.

Now, in a further extension, we aim to publish the world’s first-ever collection of sestudes. This will be done through a new publisher Unbound. Unbound is an online initiative by John Mitchison, the creator of QI. The Unbound concept is not really a new one in publishing. Robert Burns, after all, invited his friends to subscribe so that his poetry could make it into print. Unbound works in the same way – though of course with the advent of the internet, subscriptions can come from anyone, anywhere. It’s already worked for other writers – Terry Jones’s book was the first Unbound project to receive full subscription in spring 2011 and since then several others garnered enough support to make it into print. For each book the principle is the same – the book is produced only when or if it reaches its funding target within 90 days.

This is as democratic a form of publishing as anyone could wish for and, of course, I’d like you to support the publication of the 26 Treasures book. It’s a book that deserves to be published because it deserves to be read. It brings together writers of different disciplines: different ages, backgrounds and experience; the famous and the not-so-famous. Andrew Motion, Michael Longley, Alexander McCall Smith, Gillian Clarke. And another hundred writers. I’ve often wondered if we removed the names from some of the pieces if people might not be able to tell who was famous and who was not. That interests me and it shows, I suppose, that what unites the collection is the quality of writing inspired by the emotional connection found with an ancient object.

That’s what makes the collection special for me. Despite last month’s news that the number of visitors to museums has doubled in a decade, our experience of visiting museums can all too often be described as a ‘passing relationship’. We see an object, we might register its period or usage, but we pass on without a deeper thought, without a smile, a shudder or a tear.

26 Treasures is a way to remedy that. It gives us all a more personal way of responding to treasures from the past. Museums are there not to display history like flies in amber but to help us all find the human links between past, present and future and our 26 writers have given each object a distinctive and compelling voice.

So I ask you to support this book. It will be produced only if enough of you take out a subscription at http://www.unbound.co.uk/books/26-treasures. Subscriptions start from £10 for an ebook and £18 for a hardback. In return you will receive a beautifully designed book to treasure and you’ll be supporting a new literary form and the joy it’s brought by connecting museum audiences and their emotions with objects from some of our most precious national collections.

Want to find out more about 26 Treasures? Why not come along and meet some of the writers at two events held at National Museum of Scotland? You can hone your writing skills at the Alternative 26 workshop on Saturday 21 January, and take part in a lively literary debate on Thursday 26 January. Find out more here.

 

26 Treasures: the mobile experience

By Hugh Wallace, Head of Digital Media

This post isn’t about QR Codes. Despite the fact that QR Codes (short for Quick Response Codes) will be mentioned several times and possibly be the reason you’ve arrived here in the first place, I wanted to draw a line in the sand straight away. What it is about is using technology in a flexible way, the increasing importance of mobile phones as part of the digital museum, and – as ever – good content needing to be at the heart of meaningful online experiences. Apologies in advance if it’s a little geeky…

Before I get carried away in tech talk I’ll first explain what we’ve put in place. A project called 26 Treasures has just been unveiled at the National Museum of Scotland. 26 writers were each assigned an object from the museum collection and asked to write a response to it, and each of these responses is now on display within our Scotland galleries.

Some of the 26 Treasures chosen (left to right): Arthur's Seat coffins, bionic hand, King's Prize at Leith, Queen Mary Harp, Alexander Peden's mask, Prince Charles Edward Stuart's travelling canteen, sporran clasp with four concealed pistol's and the Towie ball.

As part of our interpretation we decided to edge the boat out a little further – as the aim of 26 Treasures was to give objects a voice, we felt that voice should be heard. We recorded each writer reciting their piece, and by using their own smartphones visitors can now access and listen to each of these audio recordings.

QR code in the gallery linking to V Campbell's piece about the Lewis Chessmen.

Our aim was not only to deliver something that adds value to the overall exhibit but also be an example of best practice, using information we’ve garnered from previous projects and advice we were able to pick up online, and from other museum and galleries. We’ll be keeping a close eye on our stats to get a sense of how popular uptake is.

What follows are a few points that I think are worth bearing in mind for organisations looking at how they make use of mobile.

It’s about the content and context, not the code

From my many years of experience in this field, I can’t recall another aspect of digital media so badly implemented and inconsistently applied as QR codes. Their unstoppable rise in 2011 has seen a swarm of brands and organisations jump on board a bandwagon they seemingly have little understanding of. So we see codes that simply don’t work, codes that point to websites that haven’t been optimised for mobile phones, codes with calls to action that can’t be fulfilled, codes used as Twitter avatars. That’s without even getting into whether or not normal human beings actually use them (or even understand what they are).

Our aim, therefore, has first and foremost been about creating content that we feel enhances the physical museum visit, and the primary effort has been around creating a consistent, quality audio experience. The QR code is merely the trigger, what follows allows people to listen to that audio on as wide an array of mobile devices as possible.

QR code linking to James Robertson's piece about the Maiden.

Use flexible, available technology

The wonderful thing about the web today is that you can often rely on it to provide a toolset that would have been difficult to imagine just three or four years ago.

For this project we used audioboo to host the MP3  audio files and an open source javascript library called audiojs to generate the player. audiojs uses the HTML5 audio tag, if your mobile web browser supports it, and otherwise falls back to an invisible Flash player. This allowed us to get fairly comprehensive device and browser coverage without having to reinvent the wheel.

The pages we point the QR codes to are part of our mobile-optimised site, but an alternative to this would’ve been to host the audio on a WordPress blog where most themes automatically detect mobile phones. We’ve used bitlyto generate the codes themselves, which also allows us to neatly bundle the links for tracking purposes.

The 26 Treasures mobile website.

In the past, delivering a multimedia experience like this would have almost certainly needed to be outsourced, but these days the right balance of in-house skills and awareness can reduce costs dramatically.

Getting more mobile

Use of mobile devices – whether smartphones or tablet computers – to access the web is on the rise dramatically, and this poses a new and tricky set of questions for all organisations who produce and deliver content.  How do we cater for the mobile web when so much that’s gone before has been focused on static, fixed PCs? How can we make sure the experiences we create stay relevant to the devices people access our content on? Is the browsing experience fundamentally different on a mobile device to that of a PC?

Much is likely to change over the coming years, so it’s important that cultural institutions are experimenting and iterating with mobile however and wherever they can to help them understand how visitors respond and where value can be derived.

26 Treasures is the first project where we’ve driven traffic directly to our mobile website. The nature of the project – short bursts of narrative – is the perfect subject matter as this provides an experience where people are encouraged to snack, rather than stay absorbed for hours. The small file sizes also get over some of our connectivity issues, so the content should be relatively accessible on even a flaky 3G signal.

Integration everywhere

As well as integrating various bits and pieces of technology, we’ve also tried to think beyond gadgets alone and ensured that there’s as much information as possible to allow people to better understand what we’re doing. The map-based trail available at the gallery entrance contains an overview of QR Codes; each of the codes themselves prompts visitors to “Scan me to listen”, and we’ve published information about the use of codes on our website and via our social media channels.

The 26 Treasures trail explains how QR codes work.

Given that people seem to be generally confused about QR Codes, it’s been important to provide as much light touch supplementary information as we can.

You can’t be perfect across the board

As mentioned, we’ve had to consider connectivity issues and there are points within our building where a strong mobile signal isn’t available across all networks.

The Hilton of Cadboll stone, one of the 26 Treasures, in the Early People gallery.

The pay-off for using the HTML5 audio player is that earlier versions of Android aren’t able to play the audio, but that’s more than worth compromising to be able to include iPhone users, who still dominate the number of mobile visits to our website.

In my experience with delivering any kind of web project is that you have to be pragmatic and accept, whilst striving to make everything as accessible and usable across the board, it’s not always feasible to please everybody.

In summary, hopefully what we’ve done is create an experience that can be enjoyed by as many people as possible, and we’ve delivered, on a tiny budget, something that’s successful and that others can learn from.

 

Plastics, preservation and prosthetic limbs: three months in the department of Conservation & Analytical Research

By Dr Margaret J Smith, Science Conservation Intern

In June, I began a year’s Institute of Conservation (ICON) internship as a Science Conservation Intern, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund. The first three months were spent at the analytical research labs of the Conservation and Analytical Research Section (CAR) in Granton.  Having been a research chemist for 18 years prior to my internship, where I worked on a variety of multidisciplinary projects, the skills acquired during that time have helped me enormously in my new role.

In recent decades, museums have become aware that objects made from plastics (polymers) are subject to degradation from heat, light and moisture as well as physical damage. Sometimes termed modern materials, these objects can be anything from an acrylic sculpture to a PVC raincoat.  This has resulted in concern regarding their lifespan within the heritage sector and therefore significant research on their properties, degradation and long-term storage is a key issue for museums with significant object collections of modern materials.  While at National Museums Scotland, most of my time was spent working on these modern materials.

Projects

Examing, detailing and photographing the Plastics Handling Collection

This collection contains a huge variety of plastic objects, primarily manufactured in the 20th century, illustrating the development of plastics from the semi-synthetic to the synthetic. This allowed a database of these objects to be created, which will be used in the future to monitor degradation and inform curators of likely areas of concern specific to each polymer. All these objects had been photographed in 2000, although not described in detail, and visual comparisons were made using this photographic record to their current condition.

FT-IR Polymers Library

Modern materials such as polymers can be identified and their condition determined using Attenuated Total Reflectance/Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR/FT-IR). This technique creates a spectrum which provides a unique fingerprint of the polymer based on the vibrational energies of the molecules present in it. The technique allows objects (if small enough) or parts of larger objects to be studied non-destructively. The technique is very fast as no sample preparation is required and scans can take as little as one minute depending on the detail required.

CAR has an extensive collection of polymer samples obtained in the 1990s from companies such as BASF, BP and Courtaulds. Using these polymers I created libraries which can now be used in the future to identify unknown materials.

Working in the Conservation & Analytical Research lab.

Prosthetics

National Museums Scotland recently obtained a collection of prosthetic limbs which are fabricated from a variety of polymers and metals and cover a period of prosthetic research and development in Edinburgh from the 1960s to the present day. The driver for such prosthetic development was to fit children born with no or shortened limbs due to the anti-nausea drug thalidomide.

My part in this project has been to assess the current condition of a selection of prosthetic limbs and to determine the materials they have been constructed from. I have done this by using three analytical techniques: Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) (used for polymer identification and quality) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) (used to identify metals) to identify the materials and X-rays to determine the internal mechanisms present in the limbs. The subsequent analysis showed that the metal used in the mechanism was stainless steel. The prosthetics also frequently have fabric fastenings and coverings and in older samples leather is sometimes used.

Examining a prosthetic limb in the lab.

Jean Muir Collection

National Museums Scotland holds a variety of jewellery, hats and buttons by Jean Muir, which form part of a larger collection relating to this iconic designer. The jewellery in the main is made from plastic (polymers), some transparent and others pieces colored. In addition there were some silver pieces.

The conservation reporting and creation of new accessible storage solutions for these objects was carried out by Clare Berthommier, a visiting intern. As part of her task she wished to identify the materials these objects were made from, as this would help her to decide how they should be stored. Clare and I worked together on identifying the plastics, and we also found that some of the jewellery was made from silver. Some of the bracelets were flat discs, which were ideal for FT-IR scanning using the ATR attachment. Of the pieces analysed all were identified as poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) often known by names such as  Perspex or Plexiglass.

Visits and seminars

While at National Museums Scotland I accompanied a group of scientists and curators on a visit to the Clinical Research Imaging Centre at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh. Work had been carried out there on the scanning of mummies from the collection.

I attended the Getty funded Research Network Meeting on Modern Materials in June. The purpose of the meeting was to create ideas for future projects in the understanding and preservation of modern materials. Delegates from a variety of countries attended this event.

On 28 July Dr Jim Tate and I visited Dr Andrea Hamilton at the Centre for Materials Science and Engineering at Edinburgh University to view and discuss the capabilities of the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) they have within their department. Our application was to use AFM to monitor the degradation of the surface of plastics as an aid to understanding the degradation process in addition to other techniques.

I visited Hampton Court on 17 August with other ICON interns. The day kicked off with a talk by Miriam Langford, the Treatment Conservation Manager. In it she described the projects we would view, which included the conservation on a tapestry based on a design by Raphael, Queen Anne state bed and Queen Victoria’s dolls. The rest of the day was spent viewing the studios and as a scientist it was very enlightening to see conservators at work: it highlighted the dedication, skill and patience required by them.

On 23 August I visited the Liverpool museums. In the morning a tour of the conservation centre took place, where we viewed the conservation and restoration of model ships, of which the museum has many as a result of Liverpool’s famous shipping past. After lunch we were taken on a visit to the recently opened Museum of Liverpool, designed by the Danish architects 3XN. It has an eclectic mix of objects ranging from Liverpool’s sea trading past to Beatles memorabilia.

Reflection

The three months of my internship have been busy, varied and motivating. I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to be part of the HLF Internship program. My time at National Museums Scotland has given me a real insight into the museum sector and how it operates. It has been a mix of lab work, research reading, visits, being part of meetings and planning future work. From day one I felt part of the team and I hope that I contributed to the CAR department. I anticipate that the relationships I have made here will continue throughout my internship and perhaps beyond.

 

A visit from Museums of Malawi

By Sarah Worden, Curator, African collections

At the beginning of October, National Museums Scotland welcomed Acting Director Lovemore Mazibuko and Mike Gondwe, Education Officer from Museums of Malawi. They were here to discuss plans for working together on a forthcoming special exhibition in 2013 to commemorate the birth of Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone 200 years ago. Livingstone was the first European to document Malawi in the mid 1800s and continues to be remembered as an important figure in Malawi. During the week we successfully identified a number of potential collaborative projects which will enable our exhibition to reflect the legacy of Livingstone in Malawi today.

In a packed programme of meetings and talks, Lovemore and Mike visited Conservation, Digital Media and Collections Management to discuss the development of a new national museum in Malawi and the potential for collaboration in the future. We also dropped into a schools session working with our African handling collections. Impressed with our new Education Suite, Mike pointed out to the class how lucky they were, as in Malawi his sessions were for classes of 200 who didn’t even have access to paper or pencils.

Mike, Lovemore and Sarah drop into a schools session in the Learning Centre at the National Museum of Scotland.

Their visit would not have been complete without a day at the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, Lanarkshire (a major lender to the exhibition), but there is no doubt that the highlight of the visit came when we managed, at the last minute, to arrange a personal greeting with HRH Princess Anne, who was visiting he museum to open the special exhibition Admiral Cochrane, The Real Master and Commander.

Lovemore and Mike’s visit is, I hope, the beginning of a rich and fruitful partnership between National Museums Scotland and Museums of Malawi, continuing in 2012 when I visit Museums of Malawi and, with their help, collect content for the exhibition in film, photos, points of view and objects. I will also be looking to see how we can share some elements of the exhibition with those in Malawi celebrating the bi-centenary of Livingstone and establish a more lasting collaboration.

 

Gonna make it a night to remember…

By Anita Briggs, Digital Media Content Creator

RBS Museum Lates: First Look Live was a journey into unknown territory  for National Museums Scotland and proved to be a roaring success.

We’ve had the idea of having an after hours event for the 18+ age group for a while and, with the support of the RBS Group, RBS Museum Lates was conceived. Tickets went on sale in the first week of October and were completely sold out within a fortnight! All together some 1,200 were distributed, and they proved to be the hottest tickets in Edinburgh.

Many departments, led by our Learning and Programmes team at National Museums Scotland, worked together to bring First Look Live to fruition and this led to the exciting line up and array of live acts and activities on the night at the National Museum of Scotland.

Radio 1 DJ Ally McCrae played host to a stellar line up of Scottish talent, with exclusive performances by Ben Butler & Mousepad, S-Type and Found. A Chillout Zone provided a laid-back calm in the South Hall with face painting and retro games. The Imagine gallery became the cool dance spot with Silent Disco from Fresh Air FM under the watchful eye of the giant Chinese Dragon.

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Special activities could also be found in Natural World galleries with safari snaps and creepy crawly encounters, bracelet making on the Magic Carpet in World Cultures and contributing to an evolving artwork in the Connect gallery.

As a roving photographer, I took shots throughout the evening of before and during the event and uploaded these to Flickr and posted regular tweets on Twitter.  A time lapse video of the action in the Grand Gallery was captured showing the whole event from set up to finale too!

You can see more of the live action here:

If you missed out on First Look Live, tickets are now on sale for RBS Museum Lates: Night of the Mummy on Friday 24 February, when we add our Fascinating Mummies to the mix…!

In the meantime, this is what some of those that came on to First Look Live had to say

“This is just a really good idea for an alternative night with friends!”

“Music and drink make standing in a museum more fun.”

“Fantastic venue and concept – awesome silent disco.”

“Vibrant atmosphere, a great feeling of excitement on entering the Grand Gallery, v-well put together, an unexpected and different night out.”

“Music and hot booze in a wonderful environment and I’ve had a good look at this rock!”

“It was all amazing! Loved every bit  music everything. No kids!”

 

Cultural Exchange to Turkey

By Lyn Wall, Loans Manager

This year I visited the South Eastern Anatolian region of Turkey as part of a cultural exchange organised by Arch Network, which is a Scottish Non Government Organisation (NGO) promoting learning and development in natural and cultural heritage between Scotland and other European countries. The exchange programme receives European funding from the Leonardo Agency and is available for professionals working in the heritage and cultural sector.

The visit lasted a week and we were based in the city of Gaziantep, one of the oldest settlements in this region, but also visited the towns of Kilis, Sanliurfa and Kahramanmaraş. The area serves as a bridge between East and West and is located near the Syrian border. It is an area rich in archaeological and historical sites and represents a varied mix of cultures and religions.

Eastern Turkey has not been widely promoted as a tourist destination in the past, but the local authorities are keen to promote it as such both for economic reasons and also as a means to promote their culture and traditions. As our guide Filiz Hosukoglu explained “When we share our heritage it gets bigger, if we hide it, no one will know”. Hydroelectric developments in the area over the last decade have revealed some of the more important archaeological sites and as the need to protect and then promote these sites was realised, government agencies have been established, providing funding for community and cultural projects.

The Gaziantep Training & Youth Association and Arch Network Exchange Participants.

The exchange programme offered the participants cultural experiences such as visits to museums, archaeological sites, historic buildings, cooking demonstrations, craft demonstrations and food markets. Interspersed with these were meetings with partner NGOs, academics, museum professionals and local government to discuss and exchange ideas on how to promote the region through traditional cuisine, crafts, community involvement, partnerships, loans and sustainable tourism.

A very productive morning of workshops was had with GEGED, the Gaziantep Training & Youth Association, and colleagues from Gaziantep University, discussing how tourism can be developed in the area without compromising cultural traditions, agriculture and communities. Ideas for promoting culture through food, engaging with communities and confirming ownership were explored, not just within the context of Turkey, but also for Scotland and other European countries. GEGED had representatives from Germany, Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, so we had a variety of perspectives and experiences to draw upon.

The week we were visiting, Gaziantep opened a new Mosaic Museum to showcase the Zeugma mosaics salvaged as part for the hydroelectric project in the region. The mosaics would now be submerged under water if they had not been removed, and a large project excavating over 1,000 square metres of mosaics has led to this new museum development, with restoration of the many mosaics still underway. They date from the 1st and 2nd centuries BC from the twin cities of Zeugma on either side of the banks of the Euphrates River, about 45 miles from Gaziantep.

Conservator working on the rescued Zeugma mosaics.

An afternoon was spent in Sanliurfa to visit the site of Abraham’s lake: it is told that King Nimrod flung Abraham from the cliff tops into a and he had miraculously been saved by the flames turning into a sacred lake of fishes. The site is important to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike and is now a busy destination for tourists. One can feed the sacred fish and visit Abraham’s cave, whilst also admiring the Islamic architecture and scenic cliffs. During our visit to this historic city we also met with the Director of the GAP Project, a regional development agency, which looks at infrastructure, economic and social issues, including the role of cultural activities and tourism.

Mosque and site of Abraham's lake in Sanliurfa.

Throughout the week we were fortunate to be shown many cooking demonstrations and were invited to two private houses where we could get hands on experience of making local dishes. We also visited small and large museums where we could offer advice, or contact details for our UK colleagues for such things as how to mount an elephant skeleton or how to organise loans, amongst other things. Many possible projects were explored that might involve future loans or partnerships and our visits were met with much enthusiasm and professional knowledge.

Traditional lunch with Mrs Belgin Yetkin.

For more information on the exchange programme and how to apply go to:  http://www.archnetwork.co.uk/blog

 

Cochrane on film: Diary of a Residence in Chile

A guest post by Miriam Heard, writer and star of the Chilean TV series Diary of a Residence in Chile

Diary of a Residence in Chile is a historical drama based on the diary of the British travel-writer Maria Graham, who came to Chile in April 1822, as the country was becoming independent from Spain. Widowed en route, she flouted convention by remaining in Chile for nine months. During that time, she befriended Admiral Lord Cochrane.

The project began in November 2008 when the director Valeria Sarmiento asked me to play the role of Maria Graham in a project she had in mind. She then suggested that I write the script as well and that we submit it for funding from the Chilean board of television funding. I started working straight away, we got the funding for four episodes and it all started to come together.

Miriam Heard as Maria Graham in Diary of a Residence in Chile.

We shot the material in Chile, in 40 days, in a hangar on the old airport outside of Santiago, in the boiling summer heat of January 2011. Valeria and the Chilean producers put together a fantastic crew and the whole experience was one extremely joyous creative challenge and experiment after another.

The cast and crew of Diary of a Residence in Chile.

Sean O’Callaghan, with whom I’d worked on a Howard Barker play in London, was cast as Lord Cochrane, and did a phenomenal job. He’s about to play a part in a big Portuguese production about Wellington, also directed by Valeria Sarmiento, and starring John Malkovich.

Sean O'Callaghan as Admiral Cochrane.

After the shoot the post production took several months. We shot against green screen and it all had to be incrusted into shots of the beautiful little models made by Juan-Carlos Soler. The post production of the TV version for Chilean television is now ready, and a film version is being prepared.

Shooting against a green screen.

Sean O'Callaghan on horseback - he had to spend quite a lot of time up there, luckily Chilean horses tend to be very calm and quiet!

You can see a trailer for the series (in Spanish) here:

You can also see excerpts from the series here:

 

Stories of the World: Victor Gama lends a hand

By Hannah Kyte, Stories of the World Young Ambassador

Victor Gama is a Portuguese-Angolan musician and composer. His compositions are created using a method he terms the Golian Modes. This method involves the construction of the instrument becoming part of the process of composition. Gama draws on knowledge of traditional instruments and societies and combines this with new technologies to create his unique instruments. His instruments are developed for and alongside a specific composition or type of music to become the three-dimensional component of his compositions. You can find out more about Victor Gama at www.victorgama.org.

Victor Gama demonstrates one of his instruments, Tonal Matrix, at the opening of the National Museum of Scotland.

Victor Gama has worked with the National Museum of Scotland on many occasions. He created the four brilliant original musical instruments on display in our Performance and Lives gallery. These instruments were created to be played by visitors in the museum and are specifically designed to sound more harmonious when played by several people at once.

As part of our Stories of the World project we arranged to meet with Victor to hear his opinions on our ideas so far and to ask him about his work. We thought this meeting would be helpful for us with our project because our theme is Sounds Global, looking at music from around the world – something that he knows a lot about! The discussion was very helpful to us in many ways: we thought a lot more about possible designs for the exhibition space, learnt of more relevant case studies to look into and came up with many ways of focusing in on our target audience of 16-25 year olds through new design, presentation and content ideas.

Victor Gama demonstrates one of his instruments, Tipaw, at the opening of the National Museum of Scotland.

Prior to our meeting with Victor we had fixed on the idea of ‘music and controversy’ as our theme for the exhibition and Victor came up with many potential case studies for us to look into, such as the life of Feka Kuti a Nigerian musician and Human Rights activist, music in Libya under Gaddafi and the music of the Orange protest March in Ireland. We then discussed potential design ideas for what is a challenging space to work in. This was very useful and we now feel that we have many potential original and creative ideas through which to make the most of the area and entice people into our exhibition space. Victor was able to help us with ideas on lighting, colour and creating the atmosphere we wanted for our exhibition.

Now our project is moving on to explore possible objects and case studies in more detail, in order to finalise the content of our exhibition. Four of us involved in the project went to a Stories of the World conference in Leeds two weeks ago which was brilliant, as it meant that we got to see what other people were doing for their projects, what stage they had got to and how they were going about the process. Hopefully the information and ideas we gained at the conference will enable us to make the most out of this opportunity to co-curate an exhibition with the National Museum of Scotland.

 

Photo sharing with Fife Museums Forum

A guest post by Claire Robinson, Fife Museums Forum

How can museums share their collections with as many people as possible without access to much-needed financial resources or staff time? This was the exciting challenge faced by a steering group within the Fife Museums Forum, a collaborative network for museum professionals working in museums across Fife, charged with the task of publicising member museums and their diverse collections.

Following the example of leading museums, including National Museums Scotland and the V&A, we decided to reach out to museum audiences by embarking on a project to create a Flickr photo-sharing group for the Fife Museums Forum.

At the outset of the project, we were aware that members of the Forum had very varied levels of experience of photography and using social media. In order to ensure the success of the project, we would have to provide some form of training and support on both counts.

We got in contact with Megan Combe, National Partnerships Officer at National Museums Scotland, who very kindly offered to arrange a workshop on ‘Studio Photography for Social Media’ as part of the Knowledge Exchange programme. As part of their Responsive programme, the workshop would be in partnership with the Fife Museums Forum, but open to anyone outwith the Forum who had a real need for the course.

On 27 September representatives from museums across Fife, from Dunfermline to St Andrews, left the Kingdom and travelled to Edinburgh ready to be let loose on the world of social media and photography!

In preparation for the afternoon training session, Megan had asked attendees to dust off their cameras and practise their photography skills by taking a few shots of museum objects. Armed with cameras and a lot of enthusiasm, representatives from the Forum thought that it would be a good idea to combine our ‘homework’ with a visit to the newly-redeveloped National Museum of Scotland. We enjoyed exploring the galleries and taking photographs of some of the fascinating objects on display (and even had time to sample one of the National Museum’s new cafés)!

A quick group shot before heading inside to explore the National Museum of Scotland. Representatives from member museums of the Fife Museums Forum: the Carnegie Birthplace Museum, Dunfermline; Kirkcaldy Museum, Fife Council, Kirkcaldy; Scottish Fisheries Museum, Anstruther; Museum Collections Unit, University of St Andrews, St Andrews; and the British Golf Museum, St Andrews.

A small selection of some of the photographs taken by the Fife Museums Forum.

After travelling to the National Museums Collections Centre at Granton, we joined colleagues from Verdant Works, Dundee and East Lothian Council Museums. Megan Combe then introduced us to Elaine Macintyre, Digital Media Content Manager, and Neil McLean, Photography Manager, who were to lead the afternoon session.

They shared with us some handy tips on museum photography and digitisation, including lighting and camera techniques. We also learned about online photo applications and some good examples of photo-sharing projects. In response to some of our member’s concerns about the possible loss of rights over images published online, Neil and Elaine gave some very useful advice about the management and use of digital images in social media. This was followed by a very informal discussion session where attendees could ‘ask the experts’ any questions that they had about digital photography and social media.

We also had the very exciting opportunity to see ‘behind the scenes’ in the Photography Studio at the Collections Centre. Neil gave us some very helpful and honest feedback on how we could have improved some of the digital photographs (of varying quality!) that we had taken in the Museum earlier that day. It was also very useful to find out how to take good quality photographs of museum objects without having a professional photographer’s studio and using inexpensive materials, such as large rolls of coloured paper and table lamps.

Photography studio at the National Museums Collections Centre at Granton.

Photography studio at the National Museums Collections Centre at Granton.

As a result of the Knowledge Exchange training session on ‘Photography for Social Media’, representatives from our member museums have been provided with the knowledge, skills and confidence to both participate in and take forward the Fife Museums Forum Flickr photo-sharing project. Since the Knowledge Exchange training session, members of the Fife Museums Forum have been avidly taking lots of snaps of their museums’ collections to include on the Flickr page. Equally importantly, our visit to National Museums Scotland and the Knowledge Exchange training session provided representatives of the Forum with a great opportunity to meet with and share experiences with museum colleagues from across Scotland. It was a great day out!

We would all like to thank the National Partnerships, Digital Media and Photography teams at National Museums Scotland for all their support and assistance with this project.

You can view the forum’s efforts at their new flickr group www.flickr.com/photos/fifemuseumsforum.

 

An admirable afternoon: the Navy of Chile visit Admiral Cochrane, The Real Master and Commander

By Dr Stuart Allan, Senior Curator of Military History

Saturday 26 November was a busy day in the life of the exhibition Admiral Cochrane, The Real Master and Commander, and for its lead curator. In the afternoon our Saturday Showcase ‘Cochrane: Fact and Fiction’ event saw myself and Cochrane biographer Dr David Cordingly offering some observations on the career of Lord Cochrane, and its depiction in historical and fictional writing. I somehow knew reading all these Aubrey-Maturin and Hornblower books would come in useful one day.

This well-attended event was immediately followed up by an official visit to the exhibition by the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of Chile, Admiral Edmundo Gonzalez. Lord Cochrane’s extraordinary victories in the Pacific are far from forgotten in Chile, and it was a pleasure to welcome Admiral Gonzalez and his colleagues to see an exhibition which the Chilean Navy has so strongly supported.

(left to right): Dr Tristram Clarke, National Records of Scotland, Commodore Rob Thompson RN, Commodore José Miguel Rivera, Dr Stuart Allan, Admiral Edmundo Gonzalez, Captain Ronald McIntyre.

Admiral Edmundo Gonzalez, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of Chile, presents a gift to National Museums Scotland to mark the exhibition Admiral Cochrane, The Real Master and Commander.

In order to represent Cochrane’s honoured place in the Chilean Navy of the present day, the Museo Naval y Maritimo at Valparaíso kindly lent to us, through the Chilean Embassy in London,  the ensign from the Almirante Cochrane, one of a sequence of Chilean naval vessels that have borne the Scottish admiral’s name. The ensign hangs at the entrance to the exhibition.

Admiral Edmundo Gonzalez, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of Chile, and lead curator Stuart Allan with the ensign from the Almirante Cochrane.

Our guests from the Navy of Chile and the Royal Navy gather with museum representatives beneath the ensign from the Almirante Cochrane.

The Almirante Cochranecurrently in service is a Type 23 frigate originally launched for the Royal Navy in the Clyde. The ensign was flown from its predecessor, a County class destroyer, also Clyde built, which was in service with the Navy of Chile from 1984 until 2006.

The former Chilean naval destroyer, Almirante Cochrane.

Ships of the Chilean navy are only one of the many ways in which Lord Cochrane’s contribution to national independence is remembered in Chile. Visitors to that marvellous country will find streets named in his honour, statues at Valparaíso and at Valdivia, scene of his greatest victory, displays at the naval and maritime museum, and his house at Valparaíso preserved on the hill overlooking the harbour. Further south, in the Aisén region, there is a town and a great lake named after him, and even an amateur football team called ‘Lord Cochrane’.

Cochrane-spotters in Valparaíso should not overlook La Sebastiana, former home of the Chilean 20^thcentury poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda’s admiration for Cochrane’s achievements led him to compose his 1967 poem ‘Lord Cochrane de Chile’, an excerpt from which can be heard in our exhibition. A portrait of the Admiral is one of the many interesting Neruda possessions which may be seen at La Sebastiana.

The Lord Cochrane statue at Valparaíso, Chile.