monument in multimedia

as promised just a quick post to put up a few bits and pieces - first of all the thought shower Bridget and I completed - thinking about all the different ways we could use the gardening collections:

A very busy piece of paper. Bridget and I got a little carried away - but there really is so much that these collections can be used for. Although the Monument project is being carried out in a limited time period I really think that one of the best results we can get from the process is to think about collections differently - to think of them as a catalyst for everything that goes on in the museum - whether that is galleries, learning sessions or holiday activities right down to what we stock in our shop.

Following on from our review session last week I happened to be passing one of our museum comments books and caught a glimpse of a visitor's note that made my day:

I think we tend to underestimate our visitor (dare I say a Norfolk trait?) - we tend to assume that they will not be able to appreciate the collections and that they come for the safe attractive landscapes, farm animals and adventure playground. Collections often get downgraded to "mind-boggling paraphenalia" when in fact they are so much more. We need to not only advertise our collections better, but we need to value and respect our audience and not always assume that they won't be interested.

Thirdly we can hear some of the Monument project in progress - many thanks to Gabbie who recorded this  for Wayland Radio just after our first session:

http://chirb.it/tfPeJs

A lovely example of how the project is already reaching out to local communities and encouraging more involvement in the museum and its' collections. Also how the project can be recorded and knowledge saved for the future in a variety of formats.

Finally I have plans for a Monument section on our website - containing a link to the blog, pdfs and hopefully ultimately podcasts and video clips. I'll report back and let you know how I get on.

reviewing and planning for the future

Had a really rewarding few hours together looking at how the first Collections Session went and planning for what happens next. We felt the first session was a great opportunity to bring different parts of the museum together - but it also made it clear that whilst it was good to get people from across the museum together for the project to have lasting impact and change the way the museum uses it collections we also need to plan in some more detailed sessions with individual volunteer and staff groups.

This then moved on to thinking about what we could do with the gardening collections - some blue sky thinking - it was great to think big, and then actually rather exciting to plan what we can do with the remaining time. We filled a flipchart paper with ideas - there are so many opportunities to use the collections once you begin to know them a little better. I'll upload a photo of the "brainstorm" later so you can see where our thinking was going.

We have also begun to plan out the rest of the project and it seems like everything is beginning to fall into place. We have enough time (fingers crossed) to do another joint in-house collections session (this time on objects), then a series of specialised sessions for individual groups followed finally by two workshops for the wider museums community. We are planning on working with the SHARE network to run two day workshops at Gressenhall - one on the gardening collections themselves but the second on how to use collections effectively across the diverse roles of a museum - how to get the most out of your collections.

We also thought about how to desseminate the inforamtion from our collections sessions to a wider museum audience and I am going to try and develop a "Collections Corner" informal newsletter that I can then continue to use and explore the collections with other staff members after the project has finished. The idea would be that I would briefly write up any particular part of the collections I had been working on - something I was requested by a researcher, something I was looking at for a temporary exhibition or a theme I was exploring for an event. These would build up into a library of informal guides to the collections - hopefully of use for my successor as well. We would aim to have these available on our website too to increase the amount of collections information available to our digital audiences. All very exciting...now  I just need to find the time to get on and do it!