During my trip with the Open Palaces Programme, I had spare afternoons and mornings which I filled with museums and heritage. Sometimes I would wander by myself and sometimes I would have company. My wandering to the Fashion Museum included Calla Sundin and Rachel Cottle, two awesome museum folks who put up with my ranting and raving with lots of amusement.
The Fashion Museum had been high on my list of places to visit. Being an avid embroiderer, I have always wanted to see the Elizabethan embroidered pieces. So after a morning at the Bath Museum of Architecture, I headed off with extreme purpose. My head was filled with brightly coloured embroidery silks and linen. The museum is located within the Assembly Rooms, a heritage building designed by John Woods and his son John Woods in 1769. The rooms were designed for communities to hold grand balls and get togethers, which it still does to this day under the careful guardianship of the National Trust. Below the shindigs and frivolity, is the basement home of the Fashion Museum. The collection was started by Doris Langley Moore, arguably one of the first female fashion historians. The collection was seeded by Moore’s personal collection and has been added to each year with both historic and modern items. The collection is incredibly comprehensive and beautiful. I really wanted to be able to sit down and sketch dress after dress, but did not have the time or ability to do so. The museum was filled with people, which was both wonderful and included my pet irritation of audio guides. The museum was completely quiet and included the shuffling masses moving to each curated one sided conversation. As I stood there, marvelling at the embroidered jacket that I had poured over in books a million times over, I was somewhat saddened that it was in this quiet space in a darkened area to prevent damage to it. My companions listened into the audio guide, which is quite fair, and I longed to be able to actually discuss what was there in front of us. What I find problematic, particularly in traditionally designed museum spaces (which this certainly was), with audio guides is that not all people benefit from listening to someone speak to them. As interested in a topic as I am, the moment I have no way to interact with the information my brain removes itself from the situation. Audio guides can be wonderful, but it should considered to be only one way of interacting with guests. There were some text panels, but that only gives a secondary information output and was significantly less detailed then the audio guide. To protect the pieces, the clothing was often in darkened spaces with specialised lighting. At first I enjoyed this display, but as the shuffling masses moved me along, I started to find it reminiscent of how I was feeling about the exhibition. Somewhat removed and distant from these items that I had lusted over seeing in person. It did however make for some fantastic photos. There is a singular hands on space, where replicas can be tried on for the ever important selfie moments. What I would have loved to see was more areas where you could interact with the collection or people. If I could change the displays, I would add in nooks and crannies which included touch stations, design spaces, drawing areas, interactive spaces. I would have loved to have seen more humans - the designers, the makers and the wearers. If I could have only one style of interactive it would be focussed on how the different clothing was made - preferably in a way where the visitor could attempt to create their own design and then have it printed out for collection at the desk when I left the museum. I would absolutely go back again, the collection is incredible and well worth a visit. I just felt alienated by it, and unable to connect on a level that I wanted to. I can thoroughly recommend the shop for a decent fashion books and the cafe in the Assembly Rooms was lovely
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I regularly find myself heading along the road to Sydney, a trip that I find mind numbingly boring, having seen it so many times and being surrounded by nothing but suburbia. I tend to fall asleep, much to the consternation of the driver. This time, one of the friends in the car made the mistake of asking a question about the rest stops between Sydney and Canberra. What that prompted was an excitable Museum Girl to explode forth her knowledge about Victoria Cross recipients from Australia and the quiet history of Remembrance Driveway.
Remembrance Driveway is a series of mostly linked roads leading from the Sydney area to Canberra, easily identified from the road through the rest stops being named after Australian Victoria Cross recipients. The memorial drive idea was seeded by Mrs Margaret Davis MBE, who suggested planting a living memorial of trees to honour the memory of those who had served Australia during WW2. The idea took off and in 1954 Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Phillip launched the memorial by planting a Plane tree in Macquarie Place in Sydney. The trees would connect with avenues of trees, leading to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In the 1990s, rest stops and memorial parks were added to the Driveway, deepening the connection to our military history and widening the conflicts to include those post-WW2. Interestingly, I would suggest that not many people know about this fascinating chunk of heritage. There is probably a good number of people who have seen the signs for rest stops, and made the connection that they are all Victoria Cross recipients, but gone no further then that. I have a niggling feeling that the history is largely unknown unless you happen to fall into the heritage geek category. In the GLAM sector, there is a growing connection to using GPS or Bluetooth located spots which key into an audio device. As a participant wanders close to an item in a cabinet or wanders up to a spot in a gallery, the device picks up that you have hovered near something and plays an audio file. A pretty good example of this is the audio guide in the WW1 section of the Australian War Memorial. As a visitor wanders through the gallery sound scapes and stories are told about the items inside the cabinets. The stories can be filtered down to specific topics, so that visitors connect to their interests. My big idea here, is that long trips can be tedious and driver fatigue is a problem. The roads are often carrying our cars and busses past untold stories. And finding a way to connect people with history and the landscape is a good thing. So why not activate GPS and new fan-dangled cars to give you the option of hearing about history as you pass locations? If a GPS picks up that there is a large stretch of road ahead without changes, it could give the option to hear about the history of places that you pass by. Filters could be placed on what style of histories you are interested in, and a prompt of ‘Would you like to know more?’ could let you fall down the proverbial click hole of history while driving along. Local histories could be discovered, the meanings of location names, the history of types of cars that pass you by, options are limitless. Adding these stories could reduce driver fatigue as it activates a persons mind and increase the possibility of taking a short detour to stop and see a landmark. This technology is already being used for people on foot, why not stretch the reach into trains, planes and automobiles? Make the nameless unknowns on our trip connected to us. About Rememberance Drive: Goulburn Evening Post: Memorial Plans For Highway, Thursday 10th December 1953 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/100379779? About the Rememberance Driveway: NSW Transport, Roads & Maritime Services http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/about/environment/protecting-heritage/remembrance-driveway/about/index.html Beckford’s Tower was on our list for the Open Palaces Programme, scheduled for a hands on workshop with Dr Amy Frost. Beckford’s Tower is part of the Bath Preservation Trust, along with a number of other buildings that I visited during the educational program. Dr Amy Frost is the Senior Curator and led two of our workshops, and also demonstrated her wonderful abilities in stone masonry at the Bath Museum of Architecture.
Beckford’s Tower is an incredible building that was lovely to spend time in. To reach the tower itself there is a quick stroll through a surprisingly beautiful graveyard. I felt a little like I was wandering into the beginning of a fairy tale, and wondered whether a princess would let her hair down from the gold gilded peak of the tower. I managed to make it up most of the tower until my terror of enclosed spaces and heights won out. It was an incredible view though. I loved the curation within the building and thought it was just a marvellous place to study. The building was constructed in the 1820s, commissioned by William Beckford, an English novelist. He had a deep passion for architecture and landscaping, with a love for the picturesque movement. His tower was built as a place of solitude and quiet, landscaped to mimic the concepts within the picturesque art pieces that he enjoyed. It included a vast pleasure garden that stretched between his home, located on Lansdowne Crescent, to the tower which is at the top of Lansdowne Hill. With his death, the land was sold to a publican who used the area briefly as a beer garden in the early 1840s. It was repurchased by Beckford’s daughter, the Duchess of Hamilton, in 1848, who donated the building and land to the Walcot Parish, where it entered it’s second life as a graveyard. The tower was partly converted into a chapel to carry out funerals. Originally, Beckford had been buried in Bath Abbey Cemetery, but he was reinterred shortly after the towers transformation. It’s third life started in the 1970’s, sold after being made redundant by the church. It had endured a catastrophic fire that had destroyed much of it’s contents in the 1930s. Privately purchased, the first intention was to renovate the building into two flats. The Beckford Tower Trust and museum were established in 1977 and it started it’s new life as a historical site. Bath Preservation Trust are now the primary caretakers of the building. As a side thought, if you ever want to stay the night it looks quite beautiful and is available through The Landmark Trust (link below). The workshop at Beckford’s Tower was a hands on chance to create reports focussed on restoration and conservation of the building. There was a very pleasant 60 minutes of walking through sections and finding areas that we thought could use conservation. Dr Frost was brilliant, allowing us to come up with our own thoughts and I was pleasantly surprised that as a group we perhaps picked up on 50% of what we should have noticed. The other 50% included us madly taking down notes and asking a lot of questions. Dr Frost was incredibly enjoyable to listen to and wonderfully pragmatic about the limitations that are involved in small heritage sites without huge budgets. The second part of the workshop included considering how to work on the interpretation of the landscaping, which has significantly changed since Beckford’s time. The area is complex, with management of the building being organised by Bath Preservation Trust, and the grounds managed by the Bath & North East Somerset Council. This style of situation in heritage sites is not unusual, but nevertheless awkward. I can imagine there must be a great deal of diplomacy and consultation being conducted behind the scenes. I did like the challenge of considering how you could interpret a site that can never go back to what it once was. Those bodies are happily buried for the rest of their existence. So how can you interpret something that is stubbornly no longer there? My thoughts revolved around two concepts. One of my coworkers created a fantastic children’s activity that they called time telescopes. Using old photos printed on transparencies, they attached them to white PVC pipes. By looking through the pipe, you could overlay the picture with what now existed. This is a very low cost alternatives to the AR apps being used by multiple organisations, where an overlay of images can be created to call back to the past. However, there are not really any photos of the gardens during their existence. My idea was that an artistic interpretation could be designed, using paintings that were focussed on the written details of what was described in the garden, and painted in the picturesque style that Beckford loved. For a low cost option, large interpretation panels could be placed in the landscape allowing participants to look through the semi transparent window that had a view painted onto it. Alternatively you could design an app that painted those images onto the phone screen depending on where it picked a person standing. It was an enjoyable thing to image, and I think quite influenced by a video I had recently seen of Van Gogh’s Starry Night brought to life (I’ve popped a link in below). Beckford’s Tower only opens on select dates during the year, so I recommend checking out their website. It’s well worth a visit! Beckford’s Tower: http://beckfordstower.org.uk Landmark Trust: Beckford’s Tower https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/beckfords-tower-5040 3d VR version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night: Motion Magic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Dt9ziemYA Last night I enjoyed the discussion panel at the National Capital Exhibition focused on ‘Has Canberra evolved into the city Walter and Marion envisaged?’. Hosted by Amanda Whitley, the panel members created some lively discussions around the past and the future of Canberra as both a city for the people and for the nation. The panel members were Chris Uhlmann, Catherine Carter and Dr Dianne Firth, which certainly gave the panel a variety of opinions and backgrounds. Points that I believe did reach consensus were that the Griffin Plan is still relevant and was a master piece of design. There was some varying opinions on whether it was still achievable and what it would mean for the future of Canberra.
I really tuned in while the discussion revolved around how the plan could (or should) evolve. Having recently visited Leitchworth in the UK (the spiritual birth place of the Garden City movement), it was interesting seeing how global and national concepts around Garden Cities are developing. It was exciting to see the exhibition space being used, after being closed for so long! During the Open Palaces Programme, we were super lucky to have a session with the incredible Polly Andrews at the Bath Museum of Architecture. I was really looking forward to this museum, as it intersects neatly with some of my current work, but the workshop here was incredibly enjoyable beyond what I was expecting as well.
The museum is particularly niche in content, concentrating mostly on the design and construction methods for Georgian houses. Located in the beautiful Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel, it houses a fantastic hands on exhibition of the process for creating a building during the Georgian era, many scale models of buildings and towns, and a large study gallery filled with a very extensive library. The exhibits are extremely hands on, with plenty of things to touch and read. The museum is part of the Bath Preservation Trust, which runs a number of heritage spaces in Bath (some of which I will cover in the future). The museum has a bustling education and outreach program, which is aimed at an astoundingly wide range of people. I was particularly inspired by Polly’s direction in reaching out to adult disability groups. It was from this session that I took away the statement “Nothing about us, without us”, and a lot of ideas around hands on activity sessions. ‘Nothing about us without us’ (apparently the Latin is ‘Nihil de bonus, sine nobis’) revolves around the ideal that no policy should be created without input from the community that is is designed for. Versions of the slogan have existed in history, but it has particularly become popular since the 1990s in relation to disability activism. This translates particularly well in museum practice, but particularly works well as a slogan for educational or community group activity design. Polly Andrews stressed that this concept is behind the activity and session design for any group that chooses to visit the exhibition. When I have designed school programs, I have always tried to work with curriculum but after this I feel that there is more that can be tapped into. Looking around the internet for further inspiration I found a wonderful blog article by Philippa Antipas that talks about the benefits to students not just learning, but flourishing. Flourishing includes more thought then just what we need a student outcome to be but how to make the environment something that nurtures participants into growing. I now have this slogan on my desk, and I am looking forward to trying to work much more collaboratively then I have in the past. Beyond consulting closely with groups to for what they need, they design sessions while considering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This theory follows that before education can occur, a participant must have a basic level of human need met. If a participant is hungry, cold, exhausted, as examples, they will be less likely to be able to concentrate on the higher brain function of learning. In museums, we can not magically give people rest, but ensuring that there is water and toilets readily available helps. If you have a community group coming in, something as simple as a a packet of biscuits can help a group that is participating. Penny explained how students are encouraged to bring a snack to some sessions, so that an afternoon or morning break can help to feed students and bring them back to concentration. On reflection, it’s interesting how many times I have talked about Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs in regards to history and inclusivity, but never actually thought to include biscuits or tea during training sessions that I host. The next set of training sessions are absolutely going to include some snacks! I loved the hands on activities that were set up for participants that were tied to the exhibits incredibly well. I particularly enjoyed getting hands on myself and making bridges, creating some patterns for pressing, making gilded mirrors. It was exceptionally satisfying and covered a wide range of Georgian design. If you check out their website you can find all types of activities that individuals and families can get involved with, and there is a section dedicated to their school programs as well. The space also doubles as an Arts space as well, and I have heard marvellous things about the acoustics in the building. If you are in Bath, you should absolutely take the time to come and visit this inspiring museum! Museum of Bath Architecture: http://museumofbatharchitecture.org.uk Some links to places of information: Nothing about us without us - Katherine Annear http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2013/08/21/3830534.htm Nothing about us without us: Student wellbeing http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2018/04/nothing-about-us-without-us-student-wellbeing.html Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in our classrooms - Tony Kline http://www.changekidslives.org/actions-4/ Admittedly, this artist is making beautiful things.
But still nope. My library is meant to stay in whole format, unmollested by glue and scissors. But she does make beautiful things. Artist website: http://www.locchipinti.com/sculpture.html Bookstore where this book was found: http://www.sapphobooks.com.au/ One of the stops that I had been extremely excited to see during the Open Palaces Programme was the Roman Baths. I ended up visiting twice, which I am so glad for, because there is no way I could have taken in the vast amount of information in one session.
If you are visiting the Roman Baths as a tourist, I would highly recommend going to the summer evening sessions. It’s a little quieter, and the location takes on a very different atmosphere once the glare of sunlight dims. Also, contrary to the descriptions of the taste of the water, I didn’t find it repulsive. Someone during the tour described it like ‘warm water, served through a sweaty sock’. I would describe it more like warm bore water inside a metal tin. It was odd, but not awful. As a museum enthusiast, be prepared to take a lot of notes. There is a whole lot to see and think about. There are some significant differences between The Roman Baths and the vast number of heritage sites in Australia. Firstly, there seems to be an entire country of people visiting it everyday. The Roman Baths had a whopping 1.2million people visit it during the last financial year This is remarkably close to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, who stood at 1.12million during the previous financial year. The part that makes this particularly incredible, is that those 1.2million visitors are walking through and touching the ancient space. There are areas that are protected, but when you are walking on those ancient stones you are stepping on the real stones. There are places where you can put your hand on the building and almost feel the weight of the years behind it. I can’t image the work that must be achieved behind the scenes by a dedicated conservation team to make this possible. From all those people visiting and some brilliant retail/hospitality choices, The Roman Baths turns over a very tidy profit each year. It’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the incredible set up that exists there, I can imagine that a good amount of that is achievable because they sell themselves extremely well. I was also incredibly impressed that in their annual report, they reflect on the benefit that has reached the wider community through generated tourism revenue and employment. The two fantastic take homes from the Roman Baths, for me, was the diversity of their audio guides and brilliant use of scrims. We had a workshop session with the Education Manager, Lindsay Braidley, who was entirely inspiring. Much of the workshop revolved around placing people back into the site, and their work on creating audio tours that felt personable. I also fell in love with the concept of the ‘Tripod of sustainability’ which includes Customers, Commercial, and Conservation. I will likely cover that much more in another blog post (most likely when I am day dreaming about working in Bath). Audio guides and I, are not normally friends. I like strolling at my own pace, and being required to stand in front of an object while someone talks in my ear is not my idea of a good time. Generally I find them hugely irritating and kind of pretentious. The key is, that most guides are there to inform the visitor about details, and without a guide there is a good chance of missing information. So it was with a heavy heart that I picked up an audio guide and started winding through the ginormous crowds of people. The Roman Baths has gone out their way to match people with an interest through different programs. From memory the guides included children, adults, archeology, geology and (my personal favourite) the Bill Bryson tour. You are not locked in to hearing only one, you can key into which ever one interests you the most, giving me some power over what style of information that I wanted. The Bill Bryson one particular appealed to me, because it was really a bit like wandering around with a mate who liked to think about things, and was very accessible. The children’s audio guide was quite enjoyable, and included a variety of characters that kids could connect with. I found myself frequently tuning into a session, because they were so personable. The audio points are all over the place, and there are few spots which don’t include them. Audio guides were free with admission and available in a wide range of languages. Scrims! I personally love the use of a good scrim, but not everyone does. A scrim is an incredibly thin piece of fabric, that is mostly see through, which you can either print or project an image onto. The reason that I love them so dearly is that you can very effectively create a scene where the current and the past bump up against each other. This is particularly useful in heritage locations when restoring a location to the vision of the past is not suitable or in interpreting areas which are difficult for a participant to imagine. The Roman Baths were using a large numbers of scrims with incredible results. Many of the rooms that are still being researched and used by archaeologists had scrims with projected scenes of everyday use in the space. The character actors were not often speaking (which is great for avoiding language or hearing barriers), but soundscapes created the atmosphere of noise that would have been heard within a busy location full of people. In some locations, scrims were used in conjunction with items that were placed around the area, further creating the illusion of the scene. It was an incredible experience and I found it very sympathetic to the spaces, and really felt like seeing the ruins and combining the scenes made the building extremely relatable. The Roman Baths are well worth a visit for some wonderful cutting edge museum practice. They will soon be opening up a new area, which is highly exciting. I really recommend checking out their annual reports if you are in the museum business, because they are fascinating. They also have a wonderful website full of educational programs that can be downloaded and studied in detail. It was truly a wonderful experience. |
Museum working, game playing and dog loving geek. Tune in for musings about the GLAM sector, and generally geekiness.
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