9,000 festival-goers visit Effective Collections project
Geraldine Kendall, 10.08.2011
Derby Museum's weekend at vintage festival surpasses expectations
Around 9,000 visitors dropped by over one weekend to see a vintage lounge dressed with objects from Derby Museum - a project facilitated by the Museums Association’s (MA) Effective Collections scheme.
The innovative exhibition, entitled Down The Back Of The Sofa, was put together by the museum for the Vintage at Southbank Centre festival in London at the end of July.
Derby Museum won a £19,000 grant for the project earlier this year from the MA's Effective Collections programme, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
The exhibition, which took place at the Royal Festival Hall, saw the museum using rarely-displayed artefacts from its stored collection as set dressing in a recreated DJ lounge from 1981.
Festival-goers had the opportunity to sit down in the lounge and engage with museum objects and items found in Derby charity shops, including ghetto-blasters, cigarette packets and a gramophone with a selection of records to play.
The set featured activities such as a memory library allowing people to leave behind personal recollections and the Five Minute Curator, which encouraged visitors to create their own displays and labels for objects.
Throughout the weekend the lounge was also used as a stage for a number of bands and DJs, as well as a production of Romeo and Juliet.
Derby Museum curator Jonathan Wallis said the project had given the museum new insight into how people relate to objects when given the opportunity to immerse themselves in a space.
He said: “People would come to sit down and relax on the sofa, then start getting engrossed in the space and the things around them. They felt at home there. Some stayed an hour or more.”
The museum collected several hundred responses and also filmed interviews with visitors. Wallis said: “We didn’t tell people much about the objects, which meant they had to think about things for themselves.
"Lots of people were talking about their grandparents’ living room or their student experiences, using the exhibition to have a conversation. It was really interesting to see how people interacted with each other. ”
MA collections coordinator Sally Colvin said: “This project surpassed our expectations for using collections in new and interesting ways. Derby Museum engaged with masses of people who wouldn’t come across their collection otherwise and inspired a whole range of reactions.
“Some of these they filmed as part of their evaluation and I think this will turn into a really useful resource for other museums to learn from.”
The Effective Collections grant scheme has come to an end, but museums looking to develop their stored collections can now apply to the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund.
For more information about the fund, click here
The innovative exhibition, entitled Down The Back Of The Sofa, was put together by the museum for the Vintage at Southbank Centre festival in London at the end of July.
Derby Museum won a £19,000 grant for the project earlier this year from the MA's Effective Collections programme, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
The exhibition, which took place at the Royal Festival Hall, saw the museum using rarely-displayed artefacts from its stored collection as set dressing in a recreated DJ lounge from 1981.
Festival-goers had the opportunity to sit down in the lounge and engage with museum objects and items found in Derby charity shops, including ghetto-blasters, cigarette packets and a gramophone with a selection of records to play.
The set featured activities such as a memory library allowing people to leave behind personal recollections and the Five Minute Curator, which encouraged visitors to create their own displays and labels for objects.
Throughout the weekend the lounge was also used as a stage for a number of bands and DJs, as well as a production of Romeo and Juliet.
Derby Museum curator Jonathan Wallis said the project had given the museum new insight into how people relate to objects when given the opportunity to immerse themselves in a space.
He said: “People would come to sit down and relax on the sofa, then start getting engrossed in the space and the things around them. They felt at home there. Some stayed an hour or more.”
The museum collected several hundred responses and also filmed interviews with visitors. Wallis said: “We didn’t tell people much about the objects, which meant they had to think about things for themselves.
"Lots of people were talking about their grandparents’ living room or their student experiences, using the exhibition to have a conversation. It was really interesting to see how people interacted with each other. ”
MA collections coordinator Sally Colvin said: “This project surpassed our expectations for using collections in new and interesting ways. Derby Museum engaged with masses of people who wouldn’t come across their collection otherwise and inspired a whole range of reactions.
“Some of these they filmed as part of their evaluation and I think this will turn into a really useful resource for other museums to learn from.”
The Effective Collections grant scheme has come to an end, but museums looking to develop their stored collections can now apply to the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund.
For more information about the fund, click here
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