Letters

We were very interested to read Louise Gray’s article on museums and festivals and echo the benefits of targeting these events for engaging those harder-to-reach audiences. In Leeds, we too have a large music festival and see this as a great opportunity for engagement, but have taken a different tack.

Rather than setting up a stall at last month’s Leeds festival, we used it as a vehicle for community engagement and contemporary collecting. Since 2009 we have worked with the festival organisers, performers, volunteers and attendees to build an archive of objects, film, audio and photographs from the point of view of the people involved.

This year, we recruited a small volunteer team to go to the festival and collect material on our behalf to capture the event and develop our contemporary archive.

It has worked tremendously well as a means of evaluating our existing collections and driving collecting in a new direction, as a programme bringing us new audiences both as museum visitors and active participants in our community history programme, and as a means for us to capture a facet of Leeds life through the experiences of those who can say, “I was there”.

Marek Romaniszyn, assistant curator, community history, and Camilla Nichol, head of collections, Leeds Museums and Galleries

Museums Journal July/August 2011, p34


I was shocked to see that, in the Museums Associations online poll, there was, at last count, a 60/40 split against having a more business-minded attitude towards museums.

Some argue that business sense compromises cultural values, but this doesn’t have to be the case. If museums were happy to chase funding to serve their needs, then taking a more commercial, business-minded stance now is no worse a thing.

As with collections management and disposals, if a museum is happy to take on and manage a collection, then it should also be prepared to ensure that it able to fulfil that duty.

We have long passed the time when we could sit back and take, take, take from the public purse; with the loss of Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, we now have a weaker national voice. It’s time to take stock and begin managing, rather than building and defending.

Peter Davies, cultural policy advisor, Canterbury City Council

Museums Journal July/August 2011, p17


I was pleased that you featured some of the events to mark International Slavery Remembrance Day on 23 August.

Commemoration was given government approval in 2007 in a press release issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which said this day should be “adopted as the focal date for national commemorations in the years to come”.

Unlike the Holocaust Memorial Day, ‘Slavery Day’ receives limited or no public attention each year. Museums have led the way by organising events and activities.

In spite of government cuts, it is important that museums continue to support a commemoration that deserves national recognition.

Arthur Torrington, Equiano Society, Birmingham

Museums Journal July/August 2011, p13


Graeme Cruickshank’s letter on BBC TV’s Secrets of Scott raised two points that need clarification.

Firstly Scott’s hut at Cape Evans, Ross Island, Antarctica, is not a museum. It is a historic site, visited by approximately 2,000 people each year. The lack of interpretation is intentional, the hut and artefacts within and around it speaking volumes about the privations of the early explorers.

Secondly, the project team has gone to great lengths to control the microclimate within the building by removing the ice from under it, weatherproofing the building, and reducing the humidity and temperature fluctuations within the hut.

The conservation work and the wider Antarctic exploration story it is intending to preserve has been widely disseminated not only with this BBC programme, but also by virtual tours on the trust’s website (www.nzhat.org) and the extensive number of visits to the project blog (www.nhm.ac.uk/antarctica-blog) hosted by the Natural History Museum, who will themselves stage a major exhibition on Scott in 2012.

Julian Bickersteth, artefact conservation consultant, Antarctic Heritage Trust of New Zealand

Museums Journal June 2011, p20


The latest cut our museum is facing includes a relocation to free up saleable assets, ie, the building. The new facility will significantly limit what we are able to do, and as staff will not be based on site, will remove the personal face of the museum, which previously has been one of our strongest assets.

As complete closure would be political suicide for the current council, I can’t help but feel the service is tolerated by an authority obsessed with its own vanity, rather than embraced as it should be.

Anonymous MA member

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