time for an extension

We have just sent off our appliction for an extension to the Monument project. I am really excited about this as it gives me the chance to work longer with Bridget! If awarded we will work to pass on our enthusiasm for the gardening collection to an even wider audience, improving the current seed merchant's shop display.

The original seed merchant display.

There are gardening objects scattered across our museum at the moment - some on the farm, some in the collections gallery but the majority in a recreated seed merchant's shop which is part of Village Row. This display began life as a recreation of Taylor's seed shop in King's Lynn and it was located in the main museum building. It was vibrant and enticing and most importantly visitors could remember visiting shops like this in their youth. Nowadays seed merchant's shops have been replaced by garden centres and supermarkets or online buying. The current seed merchant's shop needs updating and some interpretation to help bring it to life to modern families, connect it to the historic gardens that are growing just outside and help our visitors think about they might grow more to help them towards a more healthy lifestyle.

The extension will allow us to assess what is there, open up access to more of the collections and more importantly demomnstrate why they are of importance today. There are so many opportunities to use gardening collections to do more than just talk about gardening - they promote healthy eating, physical exercise, environmental diversity and responsibility for our own surroundings. There is so much more that these objects can tell us about. I really hope we get the extension so we can follow the fellowship through to its' logical conclusion. Everyone involved has worked so hard - it would be great to celebrate the end of the project with a garden fete in Cherry Tree Cottage garden whilst we admire the new display.

We have been working hard on our masterclass workshop events which are coming up in November. We are really excited about sharing our ideas with others from the museum sector and are really looking forward to two days of sharing what we have learnt (and also sharing from the participants who will bring a wide range of skills and experience to the days). Work is steaming ahead by our collections team as we track down errant parts of the Taylors collection and improve the records. We are even thinking of introducing a heritage gardening event at Gressenhall next year. Tune in later to see how it all proceeds!

30 days and counting...

Wow we are getting close to 30 days - a whole month of working together! Things are really progressing fast at the moment. Our heritage garden apprentices are using the collections to plan their bulbs for next year (we are sourcing heritage bulbs featured in the seed catalogues from the right period in our collections!), we are planning to use these and our seed pockets in a new learning session for Foundation Stage children and our collections volunteers are really getting to grips with the Taylor's Collection - a collection of items from Taylor's seedmerchants and warehouse in King's Lynn. Until the 1990s the collection was on display in a re-created shop, but was then packed away. Now we are updating the documentation, photographing all the items and trying to get to grips with streamlining the collection (do we really need 100 flat packed manure boxes?) and looking at improving our display of this material which is currently looking rather sad.

Our wider museums knowledge and skill sharing events are coming up (in November we are running two training days via SHARE) so we are busy preparing for that too. We also had front of house leading garden object handling over the summer so we now need to assess how that went and look to how we can improve it in the future. Being over half way we are also starting to think about how we could extend the project and sustain this excitement over collections!

tools are more tricky

We have been trying to plan our second collections session and it is depressing! Where is everything? Like many museums we have a computerised database that is meant to make it easy to locate objects in store - the only trouble is that too many of our locations are "Gressenhall" or "Unknown". I knew that the objects would be more difficult - but hadn't realised how disheartening it would be. I suppose the silver lining is that this process illustrates how important our Store Audit really is. We have a fantastic team of volunteers working through boxes, photographing objects, carrying out necessary conservation work and then creating contents lists and updating the database. Occasionally tedious, but essential work. Just how essential I am beginning to find out.

The other depressing thing is a lack of storage and working space. Despite being on a 60 acre site we never have enough room. We are always trying to balance the competing demands of modern farm machinery, collections, learning equipment and display space. Sometimes it feels like collections storage comes last in the list. For example we have "Gressenhall" locations for three wheelbarrows that we would like to use in our next monument session - but actually lcoating them has proved impossible. The most likely location is practically inaccessible because it is extremely crowded. So whilst the barrows may be safe in the barn we are not able to get into it to find them or much less get them out for people to look at in the time or with the equipment we have available.

Ho hum - there are lots of fantastic things about this project - it isn't all bad! I am loving working on researching the collections but perhaps even more passing that information on to my colleagues and thinking how we could use it across the museum. I was working today on our informal project newsletter - Collections Corner. The idea is that this will continue to be circulated after the end of the Fellowship so that we can all continue to learn more about the collections that are the unique selling point of the organisation. It covers a particular theme in the collection, tells some of the stories recorded in the collections and then suggests some ways in which these objects and stories could be used across the museum. Working on this just reminds me why I am a curator - an enthusiasm for objects and the things they tell us about life - and a love of passing on this enthusiasm. I just hope that our first edition of Collections Corner - due out before mid July - receives a positive reception!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Gressenhall Monument Fellow blog.

This blog records a knowledge and skills transfer project, funded by the Museums Association, as part of their Monument Fellowship programme. It is written by Megan Dennis, curator of Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse and is a personal record of the project.

Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse has welcomed back former curator Bridget Yates who will be working with the current curator, Megan Dennis, and other staff and volunteers.

The project aims to transfer and record knowledge of the collections and the skills required to look after and present them to the public using a variety of different techniques including this blog.

We have decided to concentrate on one aspect of the collections - the gardening collection at Gressenhall. We aim to improve knowledge, use and display of this collection at the museum. We also hope to project will provide a template method for examining other under appreciated parts of the collection.

This blog is intended to be a record of the process of knowledge transfer and an aid to ourselves and our future successors. We also hope to receive input from the wider museums community about what we are doing.

Currently we have spent some time acquainting (and for Bridget re-acquainting) ourselves with the gardening collection and planning our first collections session with museum staff and volunteers. I am really excited to be working with such a wide variety of staff and volunteers - learning, front of house, collections, gardeners and the farm. I think it is only by raising awareness of the importance of our collections to the entire museum can they retain their position at the heart of the institution.

Oh and I am also excited about finding out more about the caterpillar crusher!