It was an almost unconscious move into the world of collecting. The collections amassed for the Collect show in 2009 at the University of Portsmouth were personal items of importance to the individual collectors.

Most items were supplied by academics including Patti Gaal-Holmes’s collection of used tea bags, which she has gathered from around the world. The tea bags, on display in a battered suitcase, looked like an installation and needed a label to explain them.

Other random items went on display in Collect II, in March 2010. A rickety bookshelf, over-filled with an eclectic reading range, collections of twigs, toys and cheap souvenirs all suggested the question “why collect or display them at all?”.

For next month’s Collect III, the professional alternative to casual, personal and unconscious collecting has been introduced with the help of Portsmouth City Museum. It has joined the project with its own programme, including a behind-the-scenes tour and a lecture linked to the exhibition.

The clash of the unconscious and yet scholarly nature of Collect with the professional world of collecting has been significant. For the exhibition organisers, environmental conditions, security, interpretation and the identity of the project have come under scrutiny.

With this greater analysis of what we are doing in the project, we can look at why people collect privately. We see the balance of public promotion and introspection.

Sonja Robinson’s collection of theatre programmes from the 1940s and 1950s are often single pieces of A5 paper typed with an Imperial typewriter. They are visually unspectacular. But when asked to lend them she said: “Look after them, they are my life.”

These original documents are the evidence of a greater creative force, the theatre in Portsmouth during the war insisting that the show must go on. They are unspectacular to look at, but of such personal value that they were kept for decades as cherished items which symbolised Sonja’s early life.

Part of Collect III will be the Knowledge Promotion Challenge: 12 large picture frames containing images of the most spectacular achievements in the university’s recent research projects. But by the end of the show these images will have no value: they were generated from a computer byte and will return to it.

The twigs, the teabags and the theatre programmes will be returned to their homes to be cherished – not for their spectacle but for the personal value attached to them.

One of the advantages of involving the museum in Collect is that the safe storage and display of personal items may increase, so their owners can enjoy them for longer.

By bringing these personal items into public view, we can encourage others to do the same.

Martin Robinson Dowland is a projects officer in the faculty of creative and cultural industries, University of Portsmouth