Stocking Draping - A lost Art?

Well, what a fun night. We spent this evening putting the High Street History Exhibition together. It took a couple of hours but clearly everyone enjoyed themselves by the amount of laughter which could be heard. Despite the hilarity there was method to our madness.
The Domestic Case was emptied piece by piece under the watchful eye of Senior Museums Office Alasdair Joyce. The objects were taken one by one to a table where I oversaw them being wrapped up with their relevant stands and then they were carefully packed into labelled boxes. Photos of the case had been taken earlier so we know how to re-dress the case when the exhibition comes down. Once emptied, the High Street objects were put into the case and there was much debate about the best way to drape a stocking. Alasdair eventually braved up and with the encouraging suggestions from some of the ladies, carefully draped the stocking on top of the nearby stone jar!

Upstairs it was a 'men only' area where the guys filled the display boards with photographs of the HIgh Street from days gone by. These were then numbered and clipboads tied to the cases so that visitors can leave any details they remember about the photographs.

Back downstairs it was time to put up the 70-odd speech balloons. This was somewhat problematic as they were going to be put on magnetic boards but I really didnt like they way they looked with magnets holding them up. So, after Alasdair and I had a huddle in the cupboard under the stairs we decided to use sticky dots. These will easily(?) rub off the boards when we take the speech balloon down. There were different type of sticky dots though and we found the ones which you peeled off squares of paper were better than the ones which you "paste" on from a roller type device.


Finally the 5 foot plan of the High Street was put onto the central table, clipboards left for visitor comments, photos taken for posterity and we were off into the humid night, ready for the opening on Sunday.

Chris

The problem with girls ......

Ok, ok, I know this is going to be sexist but I find it hard enough to control one woman far less half a dozen! We've had a great couple of weeks and much has been accomplished but oh me, the noise an enthused group of ladies can make! This week one of them (ok it was Joan) asked me to through to the main part of the lab and instill some control - a fruitless task. One of the guys seemed to be more than happy to be in another section of the lab on his own - I cant imagine why. To be serious for a moment we got an awful lot done today and thanks to everyone for that. I suppose it just shows what fun you can have folding invitation cards, stuffing them in envelopes and then trying to come up with a list of invitees. Strangely the people finishing off dry mounting of photographs were much quieter (there was only one woman in that team). All this is for our next exhibition - High Street History - an exhibition of memories.

The exhibition launches next Sunday (6th July) to celebrate the launch of Sunday opening at the Museum. The Friends membership will get invited, some vips and (most) of the local shopkeepers. Readers of this blog will be especially welcome.

The exhibition brings together reminiscences in the form of over 70 speech balloons which will be displayed throughout both floors of the museum and also photographs taken from the collections of well known late Forres photographers Alec Fraser and David Forrester. The five foot plan of the High Street as it was in the 1940s will also be on display and visitors will be encouraged to leave more reminiscences and also comments and recollections on the photographs. There will also be a case of artefacts relating to the High Street from the 1900s.

The exhibition will run from Sunday 6th July - Friday 15th August. Opening hours are Monday to Saturday 10:00am - 6:00pm, Sunday 1:00pm - 4:00pm.

Next up is planning a rota for guides to do a weekly tour for visitors over the summer months. Hopefully Friday mornings will be a bit more relaxed once the exhibition is up and running and we'll have time for more training sessions. There was talk of stopping for the summer but most of the volunteers wanted to continue so that's fine with me. Anyway, we'll have to start thinking about our exhibition for next winter now..........
Chris

Tempus Fugit

Cant believe I haven't posted since April. Biggest reason for this is ill health. I took 5 weeks off from volunteering for the museum and didn't get back to it till last Friday. I was very touched by the welcome from the volunteers they were truly delighted to see me back.

I am so chuffed with the way the group have carried on and have been working hard on putting together the summer exhibition "High Street History" and working re-labelling the display cases. Well done.

Had a catch up meeting with the two remaining museum professionals. Useful meeting and its clear that I'm going to be forced to behave myself and not do to much. If I don't my wife, senior museums officer and the Friends Chairman will be displeased!

The Falconer Museum has been reviewed in the Museums Journal. I think its a very accurate and fair review. They brought up the problems with labelling and oral history but I'm pleased that we had already picked up on these ourselves and are working on resolving them.

We will be launching the High Street History Exhibition on July 6th - yes a Sunday. The museum is going to be open on Sundays in July and August. The exhibition will include the 5ft plan of the High Street in the 1940s, speech balloons of the collected reminiscences taken from the wee High Street exhibition held in the library in March, various retail artefacts and old photographs of the High Street covering the 20th century. I had hoped to be able to record the reminiscences and play them over the pa system to add another element to the exhibition but as we've only four Fridays to go before the launch everyone else thought we didn't have the time. So, regretfully in keeping with my new 'taking care of myself regime' I wont do it this time.

Seems that the Friends work has been recognised throughout Scotland and The Traditional Boat Festival group from Portsoy want our advice on a new museum they are setting up in an old Salmon Bothy and I hope they will be able to visit us soon. We also been asked to take part in a survey by Chao-Mei Wang, an international student from the University of Leicester on why museums blog.

I am still somewhat disappointed that the blog hasn't been as successful as I would have hoped mostly due to lack of comments and contributions by the other volunteers. To be honest they are not used to working with blogs or computers but I live in hope! I 'll keep posting though even just to act as a diary record of what we're up to. So, if someone's reading this, please, please, leave a comment!
Chris

When the holiday is over. . .

Well, back to the fray this week after a two week break - though my wife, nephew and I did pop in for a cup of tea last week.  The volunteers managed fine without me though they said they missed my pc skills and my knack for dealing with council machinery - a few swear-y words and a quick kick usually does the trick.  

To celebrate Hugh Falconer's 200th birthday on 29th Feb we held a birthday card competition and so the volunteers sorted through the entries over the last fortnight and came up with the winners.  In the 5 - 12 age group the winner was Jenny Mitchell of Dallas Primary School and in the 13 - 17 category the winner was a joint entry by Hannah Rossiter and Kirstin McGrath of Forres Academy.

Whilst I was away the volunteers not only judged the card competition but also spent their time making more bookmarks for giving away at workshops/visits etc, printing some more tee-shirts, choosing objects for the summer exhibition and, of course,  creating yet another version of descriptor labels for the upstair cases.  They had problems getting the printers to work though and that had to be left until this week.  Mind you, I'm still stumped by the xerox printing centre - it keeps asking for A4 to be loaded!  I think if we need b&w printing done its better to do things on our own laptop and dedicated printer.  No doubt there will be a full investigation into things when the professionals return from sickness and maternity leave.

So, this week it was a case of dry mounting the descriptor labels and picking more objects for the summer exhibition - an expanded "Forres High Street" exhibition.  It was such a miserable day that everyone was a bit put off by the weather so there wasn't the usual energy in the lab.  The new gate which has been put up at the entrance proved even more difficult to open (and shut) in the torrential rain.  Only on a council gate would you have the padlock on the inside!

Big news this week though is that we are going to change the volunteer sessions to Friday mornings between 10:30 and 12:30.  Though I had initially wanted the change so that we wouldnt be trying to share the same space as the museums officer it turns out the new day better suits most of the volunteers anyway.  

We're still coping without the two museum professionals.  This maybe shows that the Friends are now capable of holding our own and can play a large part in giving the town and surrounding areas a pretty decent museums service.  Its quite shocking though that so little money is spent on the service.  What happened to education, education, education?  We've long since thrown of the stuffy academic image and thanks especially to Mark Macleod, our last Project Development Officer, have shown groups and schools that we can be a fun place to learn.  Better stop or this will turn into a rant.

Chris

Sorry, I forgot, then forgot what I forgot!

Been very busy since last post – so much for wanting to post weekly. Have to say middle aged forgetfulness is also responsible! Anyway what have we been up to? Well, first off we had a ‘Teaching With Objects’ Training Session in the museum lab. Last year I attended a workshop on this in Dundee. The project was SMC funded and, I must admit, I felt a bit out of place among all the professionals there but it was a fun day. At the beginning of the afternoon the group of volunteers were given a teabag and asked to tell me as much as they could about it. Then, working on the premise that they were not adults (not difficult for some) or had any idea what the object was, the volunteers were given various lamps/lights and then split into groups to come up with interpretations. I also produced an insert for the Friends’ welcome manuals. I think copies of the original guides, which are excellent, can still be obtained from the SMC.

Next up, four of us gave a guided tour of the museum to the local Townwomen’s Guild. So, 33 ladies of a certain age, descended on the museum after a supper at the nearby Chimes café. It was the largest group we newbie’s had shown round the museum but all went well and the ladies seemed to have a enjoyable night. They gave us a generous donation with the promise of more later when they do their annual charity give-away. The only drawback was my mother was one of the ladies, so not only had I to be on best behaviour but had to put up with some embarrassing comments (notably about the head of hair I had when younger) though this worked both ways! The night ended with a quiz and the give-away of our first Falconer Museum Tee Shirt.

This Tuesday saw a departure from our usual sessions when we all gathered in the museum to have a critical look at the displays, accompanied by Libraries and Museum Manager Alistair Campbell. We spent some two and a half hours looking closely at the cases and labels suggesting tweaks here and there and also came up with the decision to completely redo the descriptor and object labels. We know this means a lot of hard work has to be rewritten but its fair to say that the labels were done during a stressful period just before the museum re-opened. One good thing is that the volunteers have had plenty of practice dry-mounting the original labels so the new ones should be a breeze!

As well as all this we were heavily involved in a joint collaboration with Forres Library. Community Librarian Rebecca Bolton came up with the idea to do an exhibition and workshop on old Forres High Street in the Library. From our end, volunteers Ross and Vallie Dalziel came up with a list of High Street businesses from the 1940s and then after laying them out in a plan of the High Street, Jean Mortimer painted the plan up to make it look more user-friendly. We then put together a mini exhibition featuring objects you would have bought at the time and the visitors were asked to leave a note of shops and businesses they remembered. Two open days were held with about 70 people attending both days to talk about the High Street businesses they remembered. On the first day Graeme Wilson, Local Heritage Officer, gave a talk on the High Street and brought along many photos. Rebecca tells me that visitor numbers were up by 500 compared to the same period last year. Its been a great surprise, and pleasure, that an exhibition which really didn’t take very long to put together captured the imagination of a large proportion of the town. Many people commented that those who went to the Library would never have come into the Museum. A true comment but a tendency we must change.

Today, myself, Valerie and Rebecca took the exhibition to Cameron Court, a local care home where the residents gave us a warm welcome. We promised to go back and the residents want to come to the museum on one of their weekly bus trips. More success – and I have to say this type of outreach event I what I enjoy most.

Though I’m not going to use this blog to give away personal details I must tell you that we’ve bought a wii. The ‘Brain Academy’ game is great for helping with middle aged memory loss. I heartily recommend it to those of you suffering from the same affliction. (Mind you I’m also enjoying playing Lego Star Wars my nephew’s favourite game).
Until next time…..

Unlucky for some

Thirteen volunteers turned up for today's session in the Lab. A record attendance. Though I had promised the group we would do a session on "Teaching With Objects" I was unable to do the prep because of illness but hope to hold the session next week.
So it was back to the grind for the wee group of stalwarts.
Reg heroically guided Derek, Mike and Henrietta through finishing the new labels for the display cases; Mary, John and Valerie got down to writing out envelopes for children to "sort" at the Post Office Sorting bench, whilst Henrietta painstakingly cut out scans of mid 20th century stamps to be put on the envelopes. Jean, Vallie and Joan priced up Notelet cards whilst Ross folded application forms and turned A4 paper into A5 to print the notelets on. Who's missing? Oh yes - Marjorie managed to get the darkroom all to herself and edited the old Visitors Guide to the Museum on one of the network PCs. She soon found out how slow the network can be compared to home! It's great having someone who knows their way round Word and Publisher. Whilst all this hard work was going on I lurched around from place to place generally answering questions on where to find things. I had been there for a couple of hours before everyone else though, opening up, printing and setting up equipment.
Rebecca, the Community Librarian came over with three boxes of biscuits as a thank-you for our help with the Library Display, so teabreak was even more welcome than usual. Speaking of teabreaks - the sessions have become so popular that I've had to acquire another kettle. Thank goodness for mothers-in-law who keep spare kettles in their cupboards!
We had a lively discussion on the rights and wrongs of the Tourist Information Centre moving into the Museum building; what we should do for our Christmas Exhibition this year (we've decided to do something for Burns' Night instead); acting as Tour Guides and going out and about to Schools and groups. Then suddenly, its 4 o'clock and everyone drifts away and I tidy up, lock up and head for the Post Office, Bank and Tesco before I go home and wash all the cootn gloves I can find for next week's session.
It great to note that since the beginning of the year the volunteers have clocked up 161 hours.

Forres High Street at Library

Yesterday, 78 people attended a display and talk on Forres High Street of old in the Library. Graeme Wilson, Local Heritage Officer, gave the talk in front of an appreciative audience. Unfortunately I was unable to attend through illness but Rebecca Bolton, Community Librarian did the introductions and was delighted, though somewhat surprised, at the large turnout.
The Friends have produced a 5 foot long plan of the High Street as it was in the 1940. The information was supplied by Ross and Vallie Dalziel and the painting by Jean Mortimer. Space has been left so that members of the public can add post-it notes with details of shops they remember. The Friends also put together a small exhibition of items which came from old High Street shops. Included in the items was a cash box from the local branch of The City of Glasgow Bank. This Bank was the last Bank to have collapsed before the Northern Rock fiasco of this year.
The exhibition and plan will be shown in the Library until 3rd March when the public will be invited back to discuss their reminiscences of Forres High Street.
Chris