Workshops, research and loving the Millennium Clock: An intern’s summer

By Yuting Lou, Partnerships Intern

When I packed up all my stuff and took a train to Edinburgh two months ago, I was too excited to think about how tired I was or how sad I was to leave Leicester where I had lived for ten months. Edinburgh, here I am, finally! I had heard so much praise of Edinburgh from my friends, so when I had the opportunity to take a work placement at National Museums Scotland this summer, I took it without hesitation.

This work placement was the last part of my MA course in Art Museum and Gallery Studies. Having taken courses on history of museums, museums and communities, museums in a digital age and so on, the work placement aims to give us real experience of working in a museum.

Although I have experience volunteering at local museums and working in an office environment as a trainee reporter, the experience of combining these roles together, in an office behind the galleries, was totally new. Not to mention the fact that I was living in a foreign country. Many people warned me how different the accent would be in Scotland, and I was worried about whether I would fit into the new environment quickly, and whether I would be able to complete all my tasks. It was challenging but exciting, and I enjoyed my stay here and had a great time working with all my new colleagues.

A Knowledge Exchange training workshop in progress.

So what I have been doing in the past two months? Working in the National Partnerships Department, I conducted research on current trends on touring exhibitions in local authority museums across Scotland. I also helped carry out Knowledge Exchange workshops by preparing reading materials and factsheets, and worked with the Volunteer Co-coordinator on developing internship programmes. I designed and carried out surveys to find out what staff and students think of the current practice and future development of the internship programme and I also volunteered to work for the Sounds Global exhibition by carrying out visitor surveys and helping with exhibition evaluation.

The Millennium Clock in the Discoveries gallery at National Museum of Scotland.

Working in a museum was much more fun than I expected: I loved the fact that I could walk past the Millennium Clock and listen to the music every hour every day, and the chances that I have had to explore the collections. Not to mention so many colleagues who blew my mind with their vast knowledge of the collection! I also really appreciate that my line-manager and the museum gave me so many opportunities to attend meetings, workshops and networking events through which I met many museum professionals and grew my knowledge and skills little by little. Thanks to all the people I have met, the experience has been a pleasant journey and the highlight of my year. Thank you all and hope to see you someday again!

 

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.

 

part·ner·ship

By Megan Comb, National Partnerships  Officer

part-ner-ship: [pahrt-ner-ship]

noun

the state or condition of being a partner; participation; association; joint interest.

Very few people know what a Partnerships Officer actually does. Colleagues from across the sector look at me questioningly as I give them my card, Bank Managers don’t believe me when I explain my job and professional websites don’t recognise ‘partnerships’ as an area of expertise (and I just don’t speak of what my Gran actually tells people I do for a living!).

To be honest, I didn’t know what it was before I started at National Museums Scotland. And the helpful dictionary definition above doesn’t really shed much light on it.

To me, partnership day-to-day is about supporting colleagues across the museum sector to exchange collections, knowledge and skills. It is participation, association and joint interest – and benefitting from all of the above. On a personal level it’s a fascinating job, an overflowing inbox and learning something new every day.

The last few months have seen us organise events for 100+ people, bake cakes for Bulgarians, visit museum colleagues in Fife, South Lanarkshire and the Borders, clean a polar bear in preparation of the new museum opening, delve into the merits of the British Visa system, tweet a government minister and prepare for the new season of Knowledge Exchange courses, to name but a few.

A very clean polar bear in the Animal World gallery.

And we’re very much in demand. ‘Partnerships’ is even more of a buzz-word in the museum world than ever before. If the recession has taught us nothing but this, it is that we are stronger together and can achieve more in partnership than we can alone. I’ve seen, and been part of, some of the most creative and interesting project bids I’ve heard of in recent years (see, for example, STICK OTNU). As we hear more sad news of museum colleagues moving on from posts, we find the knowledge of the collections goes with them, and our new National Programme and its associated partnership working is our approach to helping retain (and gain!) that collections knowledge through training, networks and advice.

The event for 100+ people was one of my proudest moments in the job so far. Colleagues from the length and breadth of the British Isles attended the launch of our new National Programme in the newly refurbished galleries of the National Museum of Scotland. This was a first for the department and, I have to admit, it was hugely gratifying to see it come together so well and see so many people get so much out of it. Many a useful contact was made that morning.

Networking at the launch of the National Programme.

It was also a chance for us to launch our new National Programme strategy and tell the sector about some of the programmes that National Museums Scotland run that they could make the most of. The strategy is the culmination of months of consultation and research and we’re very proud of it. It feeds well into our new Knowledge Exchange programme, which is just about to start up again. My summer has mainly been about putting together these informal courses so I’m excited to see them in action – particularly the courses put together in response to colleagues from the museums forums. This year we’ll be visiting Dundee, Inverness and hosting museum professionals from Fife at our collections centre. We’re also finding out more about other groups of museum professionals and their collections – from university museums to recognised collections, via specialist networks in transport and technology, textiles and social history.

Megan (left) at the launch of the National Programme.

Jilly Burns (National Partnerships Manager) has been involved in representing National Museums Scotland at a UK level on a working group focussing on partnership working around Sharing Expertise, yet more evidence that it’s a fashionable job to be in! National Museums Scotland has been recognised as a bit of a leader in the field of knowledge and skills exchange so we’re delighted to be able to pass on our learning to our friends in the devolved nations and regions.

Much of what we do is about raising the profile of some of the fabulous work done by National Museums Scotland staff and volunteers to the external sector, and to some extent bringing the goings-on of the external sector to our National Museums Scotland colleagues as well. Its fun, its hard work and occasionally it requires a bit of juggling to keep it all together. But most of all it’s extremely fulfilling to see all the hard work you do make a huge difference in so many ways.

And Gran? It has nothing to do with dating agencies.

 

To Bulgaria and back

By Megan Combe, National Partnerships Officer

In late May I was one of five lucky participants to be included in an exchange visit to Bulgaria. The trip, organised through Arch network and funded by Leonard Da Vinci foundation, was aimed at looking at cultural interpretation in the central region in Bulgaria, Stara Planina.

I had been recommended the trip by colleagues who had gone on previous excursions to other European countries, and I went with no preconceptions about the country. In fact my knowledge of Bulgaria was limited to a bit of guidebook reading and Eurovision watching (for ‘research’ purposes only, honestly!). So, when I landed in Sofia on 14 May everything was a new experience to me.

My personal objective for the trip was to meet Bulgarian museum professionals and compare their experiences, and overall sector, with our own in Scotland. I can authoritatively say that they share our passion for the heritage of their country – and culture is becoming increasingly more important as a business and a means of generating income.

The trip itself started in Sofia, where we visited the National Polytechnical Museum for a meeting and science demonstration aimed at school groups, using everyday household equipment. It was fascinating to see what was being done daily on limited budgets – no holding them back on the creativity front!

Other museums, as well as the Polytechnical museum, had embraced an European initiative called ‘Night of Museums’, where special exhibitions are put on overnight, with record numbers of visitors attending. Some museums chose to bring in special art experiences for the event while others, such as Gorna Oryahovitsa museum, displayed a specially created exhibition on local history for their predominantly local visitors (and covered the permanent exhibitions in doing so – creative thinking to counteract their lack of exhibition space!).

Temporary exhibition at Gorna Oryakhovitsa museum.

Our trip took us into the heart of Bulgaria, driving over the mountains via winding roads and tiny villages. Many of these villages were home to museums of their own local history and we were lucky to stop and explore on so many occasions. We were also taken to a number of secluded monasteries – such an integral part of Bulgaria’s history – to see how they portrayed the heritage surrounding them.

Solkolski monastery.

Another fascinating visit was to the Thracian tombs throughout the region – small, generally insignificant buildings house some of the greatest murals I’ve even seen. Golden wreaths and bronze heads have also been found in the tombs and these now reside in the National Museum in Sofia – however we were lucky enough to catch some of the artefacts in a touring exhibition at the nearby Iskra museum.

Our group visits Kazanlak tomb.

Thracian wreath at Kanzanlak museum.

We also spoke with Bulgarian colleagues about the challenges they are experiencing day-to-day. Lack of funding within Bulgaria is a huge issue and, despite showing what amazing things could be done with on a restricted budget, a little more and the museums would be great. It truly makes you realise how lucky we are in Scotland to have heritage as such an integral part of our national culture.

I returned home exhausted. The following morning I glumly faced gale-force winds and torrential rain on my trudge to work (a poor comparison in my eyes to the Sofia sunshine the day before) to ply my colleagues with rose-flavoured sweets and stories. And…I had the reciprocal exchange visit to plan and look forward to too!

In early June I was joined at the National Museum of Scotland by ten Bulgarians, many from organisations I had visited myself weeks before. After being treated to some sterling Scottish hospitality (cake, of course!) they were introduced to the organisation and our work by colleagues from National Partnerships, Collections Management and a consultant from Jura Consultants, who had accompanied me on the exchange. Between us we were able to draw some interesting comparisons between the Scottish sector and their own native country, and show off our own fantastic museum (if I do say so myself!). The group move on to experience museums in Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, Argyll and Bute and the Highlands before returning home. I hope that they enjoy their experience as much as I did mine.

The Bulgarian contingent visiting the National Museum of Scotland.

 

From Stornoway with love

A guest post by Ashley Ferrier and Isabel Maclachlan, Museum nan Eilean

Under our National Partnerships Strategy (2006-2011) we developed four strategic partnerships. These relationships have benefitted National Museums Scotland and all partners to build confidence around lending, exhibitions and sharing skills, as well as informing future models for working in partnership across the museum sector in Scotland.

In December we were joined by two colleagues, Ashley Ferrier and Isabel Maclachlan from Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway as part of our ongoing support and in preparation for the Lewis Chessmen tour to Stornoway in April. Unfortunately with the unexpected arrival of the big freeze things didn’t go quite as smoothly as we’d hoped! Here Ashley tells us about the setbacks and unanticipated successes of the trip:

Being mainly front-of-house, Isabel and I are very rarely released from behind our desks in the galleries of Museum nan Eilean, Stornoway. However, on 30 November we broke free and headed to Stornoway airport, bound for a one day course on Object Handling at National Museums Scotland as part of the Knowledge Exchange Programme…. except our flight was cancelled due to snow in Edinburgh.  ‘How bad can it really be?” we wondered as we headed back to our desks.

VERY bad. Over the next five days our flights were re-booked, cancelled, re-booked, cancelled many times but finally an opportunity presented itself and we were able to land in Edinburgh, all set for some intense training (and a bit of light Christmas shopping)*.

Although the original course had been snowed off the day before, Megan Combe, National Partnerships Officer at National Museums Scotland, made a heroic effort to ensure that our time in Edinburgh wouldn’t be wasted and that we would be able to visit the National Museums Collections Centre in Granton to have condensed training with members of the Collections Care team.

However, with the weather still conspiring against us and Edinburgh’s roads and transport network ground to an unprecedented halt, the trip to Granton was inevitably cancelled. Undeterred, Megan made another round of phone calls and arranged for us to meet a number of staff members who were able to advise us on a variety of things.

It was great to be behind the scenes at National Museums Scotland and to finally meet people that we’ve emailed or spoken to on the phone over recent months. With the upcoming tour of the Lewis Chessmen arriving at Museum nan Eilean in April we had a lot of questions to ask about environmental conditions, treasure trove, loan conditions, marketing and facilities reports, amongst others, but we left reassured and feeling very knowledgeable!

In advance of the Chessmen tour we needed to decant one of our galleries and so it was great to spend time with Sarah Brown, Collections Care Officer,  who shared her expertise on the latest techniques and best practices of handling and packing a variety of artefacts. More importantly, Sarah instructed us in the fine art of making a variety of doughnuts and sausage shapes with acid-free tissue paper!

Sarah demonstrates techniques for packing textiles.

Isabel creates a tissue sausage.

We were able to put into practice what Sarah had taught us as we decanted our upper gallery over January and February, with the help of our colleague Caitriona Maccuish (who was able to use the guidance material from Sarah) and some National Museums Scotland supermen Stuart and Stevie, who made the long journey north in January to pass on their case building expertise (“just gi’e it a guid dunt”).

Ashley and Sarah discuss decant options.

Having the training with the National Museums in Edinburgh made a huge difference to how we approached the decant and we were a lot more confident when handling artefacts, particularly the textiles, because of it.

Without exception all the staff we met were welcoming and generous with their time and advice – and both Isabel and I really appreciated the chance to meet everyone in person. We were disappointed not to make it to the Collections Centre as it sounds amazing but maybe next time!

Many thanks to Megan who went out of her way to make sure that we got as much out our trip as possible, despite the very trying circumstances (not only the snow but transport problems, power cuts and the lack of heating!).  She even baked cakes for us!

* We didn’t get any Christmas shopping done because the shops closed early due to the snow. Thankfully however, not even the snow could prevent the determined duo from their bottle of ‘warming’ Prosecco in the Dome!

Back at Museum nan Eilean, Ashley demonstrates the textile packing techniques she learned from Sarah.

Isabel demonstrates her tissue puff making skills.

 

A day of socialising

By Elaine Macintyre, Digital Media Content Manager

Thursday 17 March was a busy day for the Digital Media team at National Museums Scotland. Not only were I and our Head of Department, Hugh Wallace, leading a social media knowledge exchange workshop with representatives from museums across Scotland, but we were also taking part in Picture a Museum day – talk about social media in action!

Picture a Museum day was a global initiative which encouraged visitors to take photographs at museums all over the world and upload them to a new Flickr group, #MuseumPics. We asked our followers on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr to add their photos, and to tell us their favourite pictures from our Flickr photostream. Here are some of the pics they chose.

Aztec pottery dog.

American bison skeleton.

Bronze Age gold collar.

We also sent our roving Content Creator, Anita, out into the galleries to take some snaps on the day, to capture the museum at that moment.

The Connect gallery on Picture a Museum Day.

The Scottish Sports Hall of Fame, in the Scotland: A Changing Nation Gallery.

With visits to our Flickr page more than doubling that day, the event has been a great success for us, helping us introduce the vast range of our collections – from Aztec pottery to archive photos – to a much wider audience.

Meanwhile, Hugh and I very much enjoyed meeting the enthusiastic delegates at the social media knowledge exchange workshop. This free, informal event, run by our National Partnerships team, allowed us to share our experiences in setting up and running our Twitter, Flickr and Facebook accounts – and of course this blog. If anyone’s interested, we’ve posted the handouts from the session on the website – enjoy!

Let’s hope we encouraged those contemplating dipping a toe into social media waters to take the plunge. It’ll all go swimmingly…

 

From Croatia to Shetland

By Sally Manuireva, Director of Public Programmes

As Director of Public Programmes, I spend a good deal of time meeting and talking to people from other organisations. The conversation is usually about how we can work together to create an engaging, informative and exciting visitor offer. This could include exhibitions, events and digital content, to name but a slice of our public programme. Developing links internationally and knowledge sharing across museums in the UK and globally is a really important part of our work. This is an element of the job that I really enjoy.

Sally Manuireva and visitors from the Croatian History Museum

On this occasion, I was delighted to welcome a group of colleagues from the Croatian History Museum, one of the oldest and most important cultural institutions in the Republic of Croatia, founded in 1846. Jelena Hotko, Museum Educator / PR officer and her four colleagues, came to the National Museum of Scotland to see the displays about Scotland and to hear about the work we are doing on the Royal Museum Project.

Curator George Dalgleish gives the Croatian group a tour.

Our Croatian visitors enjoyed a tour of the Scottish galleries with George Dalgleish, Principal Curator of Scottish History. They also heard about the visitor consultation work we have undertaken to inform the development of the new World Cultures and Natural World galleries, which are due to open in summer 2011. We also talked about our plans to make the collections that are going on display (many for the first time) available through the website.

It was very interesting to hear about plans for a new museum of Croatian History in Zagreb, which is in the early stage of development. Books and catalogues from our respective museums were exchanged; our very popular publication on bagpipes was well received, as was their beautiful publication, entitled ‘Treasures of Croatia’.

Looking ahead, I will be travelling to Shetland Museum in January 2011 for the opening of Lewis Chessmen: Unmasked, our touring exhibition in partnership with the British Museum and the Scottish Government. The exhibition is currently at Aberdeen Art Gallery until 8 January, where it is proving a hit with visitors. I will send a virtual postcard from Shetland.

 

One week like this – a national adventure

By Megan Combe, National Partnerships Officer at National Museums Scotland

Working for National Museums Scotland, for me, generally means spending more time in and around other museums than my own. The small but effective National Partnerships team are constantly busy – helping to deliver training, support and specialist advice to colleagues across Scotland. The majority of this is done through our Knowledge Exchange Training Programme which I co-ordinate, but frequently through working with networks, advice giving and simply meeting other museum and gallery professionals.

Below is an extract of a ‘week in the life of…’ diary detailing my recent adventures and travels in the name of  National Partnerships.

Sunday
I’m heading north to start my working week in Aberdeen. The weather’s phenomenal and showcases the autumn colours beautifully on the drive up – though I’m largely getting distracted by the bangs and bumps coming from the direction of the boot of the hire car as a week’s worth of training materials and leaflets are thrown together. Sunday evening is spent double checking everything’s survived (it has!) and putting it back in order, ready for an early start

Megan Combe’s car loaded ready for trip to Aberdeen.

Monday
In an unforeseen move I spend the best part of my 30 minute parking ticket queuing outside a popular food and clothing chain in Aberdeen City Centre, waiting patiently for the trays of food I ordered to be found. Thankfully they turn up in time and I can whizz over to the Art Gallery to set up for the first day of training. Today it’s an Introduction to Visitor Studies, run by Jenni Fuchs, Audience Research Officer, in an eerily quiet venue, as the Art Gallery is closed to the public.

Wednesday
Wednesday morning, Arbroath station. As my hire car inexplicably (and irreversibly it seems) is set to auto-tune I listen to the dulcet tones of Radio North Angus while waiting for Jilly Burns, National Partnerships Manager, to join me. We’re off to Forfar to join the Tayside Museums Forum for one of their regular meetings, but not before driving around various roads in Forfar trying to find the Meffan Museum. Once we arrive, a little late, we’re welcomed with tea and biscuits and settle down to hear all about the cultural goings on in and around the Dundee and Perth area.

The Forum was formed in 2005 with funding as part of the Regional Development Challenge Fund, and continues as a network of all museums in Tayside – regardless of size or funding. Jilly and I were able to tell them about the training programme, advise them of networks that they could join and generally enjoy meeting some passionate people.

Back in the office after our drive back down I’ve got just enough time to load up with more leaflets and boxes for further travels tomorrow.

Thursday
It’s a very early start as I pick up Katie Simes, Preventative Conservation Officer, for our drive over to the Greenock. Today’s training is on Pest Management, and is not only one of our Knowledge Exchange workshops but is part of a larger training programme for museum professionals in Inverclyde and surrounding areas, put together by colleagues at McLean Museum and Art Gallery with funding from Museums Galleries Scotland.

McLean Museum and Art Gallery

It’s a fantastic venue, a lovely lunch and a great local museum as well – Katie and I are impressed by the enthusiasm for identifying ‘beasties’ in the morning, although I think everyone leaves feeling that little bit more itchy than normal! For the afternoon session participants are tasked with wrapping an everyday plastic chair for quarantining and given feedback on their performance, as well as information on treatments and prevention of pest infestations. Finally, after a two hour ‘experience’ of Glasgow rush hour, I drop Katie off and head home.

Katie’s Knowledge Exchange training workshop in progress.

Friday
Back to normal in the office, as I’m greeted by 114 unread emails and a pile of unopened mail. I rush to a meeting with Katie to brainstorm some ideas for a new logo for one of the networks that National Museums Scotland takes a lead in, called the Preventative Conservation Forum (PCF). I’m also keen to hear feedback on the Scottish Transport and Industry Collections Knowledge network (STICK ) event has gone earlier in the week, where some of my colleagues from the STICK steering group and the Subject Specialist Consultant have been meeting with local museums in the Highland. Good news and lovely photos appear in my inbox later in the afternoon.

I love getting out of the office and meeting colleagues across Scotland, almost as much as I love wandering around new museums! It’s been an interesting and exhausting week, but the evaluation forms and emails from people I’ve met this week prove that it’s all worthwhile. I’ve a mountain of paperwork to complete, a hire car to drop off and a blog to write up before my busy week can end, but end it does.

Summary of week
Miles travelled – 489
Hours worked – 46
Evaluation forms filled in – 37
Emails waiting – 114
Biscuits eaten – too many!

 

Turf, stone and Icelandic folklore

By Vicky Evans, Loans Officer

At the end of June, I took part in an Innovation in Cultural Heritage Interpretation (ICHI) exchange in East Iceland funded annually by the European Leonardo da Vinci Programme. Designed for Scottish heritage professionals to gain a better understanding of international developments and working practices in their field, the exchange provided a unique opportunity to discuss project working and partnerships with international colleagues in a spectacular location.

The trip itself was centred around Skálanes, a remote nature reserve in East Iceland which experiments in sustainability and educates visitors on the important connection between nature and people in Icelandic culture. Run from a restored traditional Nordic farmhouse and fairly unique in Iceland, Skálanes is involved in a diverse range of ongoing projects, providing access and facilitating current thinking on ecology, natural history, geology, archaeology, conservation, traditional skills and Icelandic history.

Hands on work at Þórarinsstaðir excavation site.

From this base, the exchange group visited regional museums and reconstructed buildings, exhibitions and local art institutes, as well as meeting a variety of people responsible for the preservation and interpretation of Icelandic heritage and collections. Meeting the exhibition development team at the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik was particularly interesting and an opportunity to discuss their capital redevelopment project, which concluded in 2004.

National Museum of Iceland.

Learning about Icelandic culture was naturally a major part of this exchange. Through handling collections at the East Iceland Heritage Museum, learning about turf wall construction, discussing the very real possibility of the existence of mountain trolls, and tentatively sampling dried salt fish, we got a pretty rounded experience of Icelandic life, past and present!

View across the fjord at Skálanes with duck houses in the foreground.

We also got stuck into plenty of hands-on work, consolidating and interpreting the excavation site of an early Christian church at Þórarinsstaðir, and assessing interpretation methods with the archaeological team at Skriðuklaustur (the excavation site of a pre-Reformation monastery). Volunteer groups such as ours are, we discovered, an invaluable resource in Iceland, where domestic volunteer working is virtually non-existent and the Archaeological Heritage Agency of Iceland significantly under-resourced. Working at the practical face of their heritage sector demonstrated how well funded the UK is by comparison, and encouraged much discussion about how we can all work more efficiently and effectively.

View across the fjord at Skálanes with duck houses in the foreground.

The overwhelming response at the end of the exchange was acclaim for the willingness of the Icelandic heritage sector to work in partnership in order to drive projects forward. Despite the lack of volunteer support and central funding, we experienced a culture of initiatives ‘coming from below’, the result of which is a creative and dynamic sector in terms of project working and problem solving; where communities continue the work once ‘the professionals’ are gone. Although community engagement is admittedly new in many areas, local involvement is the key success factor in the completion and continuation of many of their projects.

I have taken away many ideas for future partnership working in Scotland and the UK, and have genuinely been inspired by the proactivity, pragmatism and unique culture I experienced in East Iceland.

Traditional architecture in Seyðisfjörður.

Resident arctic fox cubs at Skálanes.

Cliffside view from the Skálanes Nature Reserve.

Newly hatched ducklings.

The Blue Lagoon, Grindavik.

Fjord Þórarinsstaðir excavation site.

Sunset across the fjord at Skálanes.

Duck pond at Skálanes.

2am at Skálanes.

Photos courtesy of Sheena Irving AV.

 

Made you look, made you smile

By Jilly Burns, National Partnerships Manager

This May, one of the mummies from our collection was loaned  to the Dick Institute in Kilmarnock, as part of the National Museums Scotland partnership programme with East Ayrshire Museums Service. So far, the exhibition has been a great success. Since the mummy’s arrival, East Ayrshire has reported a 100% increase in visitor numbers over the last month.

The exhibition has also received an interesting gift in the form of three knitted pyramids left for staff with a label saying ‘Made You Look Made You Smile’ – Yarnbombing by Night Knit Pixie.

Knitted pyramids left outside the Dick institute in Kilmarnock.

Started in the US, this knitted graffiti craze, or ‘y-bombing’, is becoming quite popular, as seen on this website www.yarnbombing.com. Edinburgh residents may have noticed the yarn bombed knitted signpost in Teviot Square.

The mummy will be on display at the Dick Institute until 28 August. You can find out more about the history of Iufenamun the mummy priest on our website.