Keats House Museum (currently closed for refurbishment), London Metropolitan Archives and EC1 New Deal for communities - Wallace and Gromit Make a Museum!
Contact: Mick Scott: Mick.scott@cityoflondon.gov.uk
keatshouse@cityoflondon.gov.uk
Theme: Create your own museum by learning about conservation, collections and stories.
Saturday 17th May 2008
Budget: £750
Objectives:
· To introduce the local community to the archives and explain more about what we do
· To reach out to potential new visitors during the Keats House closure and maintain the profile of the museum
· To inspire families to visit museums, galleries and archives more often and to encourage family learning
· To get across to participants that museums, galleries and archives are interesting, fun places to visit
· To build on the working relationship between Keats House, LMA and EC1 New Deal
The event
The event gave local families the opportunity to learn more about museums, curating, conservation, objects and collections. We encouraged families to imagine a museum dedicated to them where uncles / grandparents are on display and collections are favourite toys or pets.
Drama and storytelling centred on these ideas. Keats House staff ran an object handling session where children had the chance to make their own museum objects out of play-doh. LMA conservators ran an activity about ‘museum baddies’ where families could look at bugs under microscopes.
Examples of damaged documents were also available to look at plus activity sheets. The afternoon ended with a showing of Aardman’s The Wrong Trousers, partly set in an imaginary museum. Separate areas were available for under-fives and fruit and juice was available throughout the day. ‘Wallace and Gromit Make a Museum!’ was a free event.
Evaluation
· Very well attended with 71 children and 43 adults
· Attendees were representative of the local borough – multicultural and from estates classified as deprived areas
· The event was listed in Time Out and was well publicised throughout City of London libraries and heritage sites. Event also included in the City of London events brochure.
· The event has generated more interest in Keats House and LMA
· The collaboration between Keats House, LMA and EC1 New Deal was very successful
Some comments from Visitor Evaluation forms:
“Brilliant space and resources. Please keep organising entertaining and educational workshops like this”
“A great day. Thank you for making the mysterious archives more accessible”
“Well organised. Plenty of things to do for the kids. Educational too”
What made the event special?
· For the organisers:
This was the first collaborative effort between Keats House Museum, London Metropolitan Archives and EC1 New Deal for Communities (Borough of Islington). The success of this new partnership will mean a wider pool of resources and skills for all involved, ultimately meaning that the public will benefit. With this being the first event of its kind, we can learn from our actions and look forward to similar activity days in the future.
Due to the closure of Keats House, the recently refurbished public rooms at LMA served as a venue – 71 children running about was a good way to test the sturdiness of the new rooms! This was also the first year that LMA took part in Museums and Galleries Month.
· For the participants:
This year we had to be particularly creative because of the closure- typically, we would have organised an event focusing on the Regency period or John Keats. What made the event unusual was how we focused on the practical side of working in museums: the day-to-day running of properties, caring for objects and telling stories about those objects.
The event offered a rare opportunity to engage with conservation staff normally working behind the scenes in museums, galleries and archives. Families could also explore their equipment (such as microscopes) and see the bugs that harm collections and the kind of damage they do.
Participants also had the opportunity to handle real museum objects and then create their own, thinking about interpretation, stories and collection care. The event was geared towards family learning so participation from the whole family was encouraged, even in the drama sessions! A screening of The Wrong Trousers made the event particularly special for everyone.
How will ‘Make a Museum’ inspire?
· The organisers:
The success of the event will mean that we are confident to run events of this scale in the future: it brought more visitors to the new public rooms than ever before and has paved the way for similar educational sessions.
With ‘Make a Museum’ as the basis, the relationship between Keats House, LMA and EC1 can be nurtured further, hopefully resulting in more events and future collaborations. This was also an excellent opportunity for staff to be creative and gain more experience working with families and the local community. This is something that Keats House staff will develop further when the museum reopens.
· For the participants:
‘Make a Museum’ introduced a new demographic to the archives and explored what museums and galleries do through educational workshops, drama and practical sessions. One of our main objectives was to make it FUN and to give the impression that museums and galleries are exciting places to visit. We hope that this will inspire families to visit them more often and to attend similar events here and at other institutions. The activities were also devised to encourage creativity in children and to inspire learning in all ages, even parents and grandparents.
Regardless of the Keats House closure, the museum still took part in MGM demonstrating that we did not necessarily need a museum for a Museum at Night event! Instead, we made our own out of play-doh and stories.
