Behind the scenes

Ok, so some of my resolutions are nothing to so with the subject matter of this blog and relate to important matters such as cake, wine and ‘spontaneous’ purchases (less of) and keeping in touch with friends (more of). Other resolutions are of a more professional tone, and I am keeping one of them RIGHT NOW by blogging. I resolve to blog more, and to persuade (nag, blackmail or otherwise pressurise) other colleagues to do the same. I am not going to make any rash promises about once a week (cats chance in hell), or even once a fortnight (still deeply unlikely), but I will do it.

So onto the meat of the offering, some predictions for the future…stare with me into my virtual crystal ball and see what 2010 is going to hold for East Lothian Museums. One thing is certain, we will be very busy and there is unlikely to be a dull moment. We are lucky - culture and heritage are live issues in East Lothian and there are lots of people taking an active positive interest in what we do and can do (from commenting on this blog, to volunteering with us). No sitting around in dusty stores for us!

We are working hard on the museum interpretation plans for the John Gray Centre in Haddington. In fact at time of writing the contract for the building work is about to be awarded! Tender documents are close to being finalised for the redevelopment of the interior of Dunbar Town House. The tender has been issued for the interpretation contract for Musselburgh Museum, and we are very much looking forward to seeing what ideas come back. Aside from big developments like these the Service will continue to work to provide a stimulating, fun, informative and accessible experience for as many visitors as possible at all of our venues - I don’t want Prestongrange Museum or John Muir’s Birthplace forgotten. Bookmark our websites and visit soon to see events and exhibitions programmes. Become a friend of ours on Facebook or visit us on Flickr, check us out on YouTube. We are everywhere (sort of like Big Brother, be far far less scary and intimidating)!

So, until next time…

  Calling all photographers (good or otherwise), social networking followers, or anyone who has ever used Wikipedia to look up some obscure topic….That’s nearly everyone then. Well, we are very excited as Prestongrange Museum and John Muir’s Birthplace are taking part in a special Wikipedia initiative being held in February 2010.

 What’s it all about, I hear you cry! Get out of those wellies, knock the snow out of your ears and I’ll tell you more…

Wikipedia are holding a photography competition called ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’. The focus of it is that people will be encouraged (through prizes) to take photographs of their local museums and their collections and post them onto Wikipedia, hence generating much more interest and information surrounding museums in general. So we decided to run an event to coincide with this.

It’s called ‘East Lothian Photographers LOVE Wikipedia’ and its on Sunday 14th February at Prestongrange Museum and John Muir’s Birthplace.  We’re also offering free tea/coffee/tours at both venues from 1-4pm! It sounds like it could be really successful and a good, fun event to get new people into and using our venues. I just hope we get enough people who are interested…Please do help us by passing the details onto anyone you know who might be interested. Can you beat our rather stunning photography attempts? (This was taken by the passenger, I promise)

More details on our event: www.eastlothianmuseums.org/content/pages/events-and-activ…

And on the wikipedia competition which you might be interested in anyway:
uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Britain_Loves_Wikipedia

 And lastly, what did I last use Wikipedia to look up? The Glasgow Police Museum which I visited over the holidays. A very friendly reception so do pop in if you’re passing.

 As the ‘noughties’ draw to a close, it’s time to look back over the last 10 years. Do you remember the Millenium bug which was going to wipe out all computers? Or the Sydney Olympics? Unbelievably that was 10 years ago!

Talking in the office today, all museums staff have done various different things over the past 10 years from French Degrees to working in the Secret Bunker. And here we are, ending up with mainly female team heading into a new decade which will see the opening of 2 new museums - Musselburgh and the John Gray Centre. Plus the refurbishment of Dunbar Town House and various ongoing improvements at Prestongrange and John Muir’s Birthplace. There’s enough to keep us busy for the first few years anyway…

The BBC have compiled a list of the 20 most important objects of the last decade as well as a very clever illustration. These include a ‘Bag for Life’, iPod, Credit Card, Hoody and hair straightners. What would be your object of the last 10 years? Personally, mine would be my laptop.

Finally, on behalf of the Museums Service, I’d like to wish all our blog readers a merry Christmas and a happy new decade. Thanks for reading and for commenting throughout the year.  We hope to welcome you back to our sites next year - either web or museums!

 Hello, this is Kevin and I am both a volunteer within the Museum Service and a casual museum assistant at John Muir’s Birthplace. I’m here to tell you about what I do as a volunteer. I volunteer once a week, usually on a Wednesday, helping with the upkeep of the collection. The collection is a gallimaufry of objects of all shapes, sizes and varieties. I deal with the weird and wonderful, usually both simultaneously, that comes into the collection and am often found inputting new objects into our new online collections database. Each object is something new to learn about, an insight, however minute, into the life of this county in years past. Last week I was making a list of objects found in the back of a shop in Haddington High Street and was particularly interested by the masons’ marks on the various pieces of stone donated. Sometime I need to read up on that.

Volunteering here is an ever-varied enterprise. There are seven other volunteers here. We don’t often get to meet each other since we usually come in on different days, though today two of my comrades are here cataloguing archaeological artefacts in the Store. I am helping tidy the workroom, where new objects are kept in preparation for accessioning and storage, as well as sorting out some documents. We all have different areas of interest or expertise that we can add to our work – I usually accession objects relating to Dunbar, where I live, though when working with other objects I can sometimes bring some other obscure knowledge to the fore, for example about politics in the case of objects relating to curling.

I just went into the Museum Store, a climate controlled space where the vast majority of the collection – numbering around twelve thousand objects, at last count – is kept. I never fail to be distracted and drawn to some object far away from what I am looking for. In the Store I may be putting objects away, preparing others for display in exhibitions or taking photographs of objects as part of an audit. When I first visited, as a school student on work experience a few years ago, the stuffed seagulls and rodents and the small paddleboat from the old outdoor swimming pool in Dunbar particularly intrigued me. Now, older and slightly more refined, I get waylaid looking at paintings. I like landscape art and we have a few examples, including one I saw a moment ago on a beach looking out to sea with a few tiers of waves crashing to the shore. Having just checked the database entry, it is by Patrick W. Adam and depicting the low tide at Gullane.

Volunteering here is never dull and always throws up some new challenge, just to keep things exciting. It’s been nice to share some of that today. Bye for now.

 Talking to various museums people at a conference recently, it’s interesting the amount who haven’t started using social networking sites as yet, or indeed the wider internet in general. I thought I’d just remind people of what we’ve done and what’s worked well…

We launched our Facebook site a few months ago. It was easy peasy to set up and it’s now one of my favourites to update as it just takes 2 seconds, reaches everyone immediately and is a good way of sharing info. We now have 42 fans on Facebook! Please follow us if you haven’t done so already - search for ‘East Lothian Council Museums Service’. We used the Museum of the University of St Andrews as our model for this so check them out too.

Our websites are operated using Website Baker. It’s just like using a word processor to update your pages. I just trained two people on it this morning so we can update the John Gray Centre website.

 Our YouTube site definitely needs more work. It’s one of the things I’m going to get round to after Christmas - I promise! At the moment it has a variety of films, many to do with the loco No 6. We’ve had a little spurt in people subscribing and requesting to be friends recently without us doing anything really!

Flickr remains as one of our most used sites. We recently posted photos of the Suffragette March and Multi-Cultural Day, both which were attended by lots of people and it was a really easy way of sharing the photos. One tip - always give each photo a title and description. I hate it when photos are up but you have no idea what they are of!

Survey Monkey has also been our saviour on many an occasion. It’s a website which lets you carry out questionnaires free of charge online. We pay for the more advanced service because of the amount we use it. We’ve used it many times this season to analyse visitor surveys, carry out consultation with communities and to gain feedback from events. It’s so simple to use and you can download reports containing graphs, percentages and pie-charts which make reporting back much easier. Perfect for those strapped for time to do proper evaluations.

Our collections are also on Scran - you can access this free from any library and it contains collections from museums, galleries, archives and libraries from across Scotland.

We haven’t branched out to using Twitter yet. I don’t know if it’s really for us, but we’ll see…

Any other suggestions as to sites other people have used that are useful, please leave a comment and spread the word!

I thought it was time to give a quick update on the John Gray Centre. You might have noticed, if you live or work in Haddington, that there is some activity happening outside the planned location on Lodge Street. Archaeological digging started in September - they’ve found nothing exciting as yet. No huge finds of treasure sadly.

Studioarc, the museum designers, are progressing with plans. As an Education Officer, I’m obviously really interested in the interactive side of the museum and it looks like it’s going to be really successful on that side of things. So far we have dressing up, postcard stamping, helping farmer John with his grandparent’s strange objects, unlocking secret boxes and much more!! 

I visited Wallyford P3s recently to ask for their advice on one interactive element called ‘Senses of the Sea’ (you might remember me mentioning it in an earlier blog). Their ideas were priceless, here’s a taster:

Smells of the sea - fish, seaweed, custard(?), seals

Tastes - hotdogs, chips, ice-cream, salt, beers…

Sounds - Children playing, splashes, laughing, speedboats, “icescream van jingle”

Touch - shells, sand, water, starfish, rubbish

I was particularly intrigued by one thing they all kept suggesting - “cheona”. Have you guessed what it is yet?

Of course, tuna.

They were a delightful class and their teacher Miss Reeves had them all enthusiastically talking about science, would you believe? I’ve asked if they will all be our tour guides when we open!

I was intending to come on here to write about how sad it was that the BNP were going to be appearing on BBC’s Question Time within Black History Month, when we’re supposed to be celebrating the postive contributions of Black people to British History as well as uncovering hidden stories within our own local and personal histories. However, after watching the programme last night, I have since changed my views….I now am extremely pleased that Nick Griffin was allowed to go on and air his views which were shown as false, bigoted and at points deeply upsetting that someone in today’s society can still hold (and preach) these views. Here at East Lothian Museums, we’ve been holding a series of events over the past month to celebrate diversity, many of which I’ve detailed in earlier blogs. Watching the programme last night, it made me even more determined that we should continue to hold events such as East Lothian’s Multi-Cultural Day in order to prevent segregation within our local society and to encourage people to see Britain, Scotland and East Lothian as places where a variety of different people can live together, with mutual understanding and respect for each other’s differences.

Multi-Cultural Day included a variety of performances, people and events. The highlight for many were the wonderful Indian Dancers dressed in fabulous costumes - in particular they had a performance using a mixture of Indian and Celtic music which was very clever. Tawona and Ernest, originally from Zimbabwae, performed a variety of poems, stories and music using their hand-crafted instruments. They represented the Seeds of Thought Urban Poetry Group. The noise of the instruments is difficult to describe but it sounded a bit like the chiming of a nursery rhyme in a wind-up toy, but alot faster and more musical. The Grants Braes Burns Club provided a traditional Scottish element to the day, performing some of Burns’ works along the themes of identity and told the well-known story that Burns almost went to the West Indies to become part of the Slave Trade. Coreen Scott was accompanied by Hamish on the Pipes and Scott on the guitar and produced a wonderful sound. We also had local Belly Dancers who performed an Egyptian stick dance. Their movements were amazing! The highlight of the day onstage for children was a French Puppet Show by Tania, who told the story of Lapin, who was very concerned with where his maracas were!

As well as all this we also had stalls by groups such as ELREC and the Dunbar Arts Hub, while local artist Ettie Spencer held a drop-in art workshop for all ages. Sheila Asante offered an object handling session within the Slave Trade exhibition, allowing people to get a close up view of objects such as cotton and tobacco. All in all, a wonderful day, which attracted people from many different cultures, including French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, English, Scottish, Zimbabwean, Ghanian, Brazilian, Indian, and many more. Some of the photographs are on our Flickr site. So many people said to us during the event that they were so glad we were doing an event like this in East Lothian. Draw your own conclusions from that!

But where would all these people who came and celebrated East Lothian’s diversity fit into Nick Griffin’s Britain? Yes, they probably wouldn’t and that’s why we need to continue celebrating the true diversity of our local area. Plans for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month in February 2010 are already underway, as are details of how we’re going to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day in January. So, where am I going with this blog? Well, your challenge is to come along and join us at some of these events, or to go and find out something about another culture this weekend, or watch Question Time and then share your views. It’s up to us…

   For those of you who are regular blog readers, you’ll know that Arun Gandhi was coming to East Lothian. I heard him talk on Monday and it was wonderful. He held a session for local school children in the afternoon and then the general public in the evening. He had lots of stories about how his grandfather (Mohandas Gandhi) had influenced his life and told them in such a reserved and calm manner. One story was about when he was a boy he threw away a pencil because he thought it was “too short” and was just going to ask his grandfather for a new one. However, Gandhi made him go back out and look for the pencil in the dark to teach him the lesson that man was over-using the world’s natural resources and that people consume things just because they can, but ultimately this means that others cannot access the same resources. Gandhi said Arun’s act was ”violence against nature”. It was interestingly a similar view to our own John Muir about the importance of protecting the environment, but before such issues had really reached the wider public conscience.

 We also went on a march on Saturday 10th October to commemorate the Suffragettes who campaigned for “Votes for Women!”. We had our own East Lothian banner, created by attendees at a Suffragette Coffee Morning back in September. A group of pupils from Preston Lodge High joined our group and managed to get themselves interviewed and in lots of photos throughout the walk! It ended on Calton Hill where speeches and singing took place. Sheila and I also walked to the very edge of the hill to get a few photos. It was a tad windy as you may be able to see from the photos!

 And as for the bellydancing reference in the title? Multi-Cultural Day at Prestongrange of course. We’ve got a variety of cultures represented including a French Puppet Show, Polish tour of the museum, an Indian Dancer, Zimbabwean Poets and the local Sangstream Choir and Grants Braes Burns Club. There will be a huge marquee outside the Visitor Centre and I’ll be heading there on Saturday to get it all set up and ready to go for first thing on Sunday. We have no idea what our visitor numbers will be for the day…hopefully the 144 chairs will be an alright guestimate!

If you’ve attended an event as part of Black History Month this year, do let us know what you thought!

 And it’s not even a trick title! Arun Manilal Gandhi is the fifth grandson of Mohandas Gandhi. As part of Black History Month 2009, Arun Gandhi is visiting the Brunton on 12th October and delivering a talk on his views on non-violence. It’s bound to be fascinating. Details on how to get your free tickets can be found here.

At Prestongrange, we have a few events for Black History Month too. Sheila has a talk and tour on the Wedderburn Brothers on 8th Oct at 7pm, free tickets are available from the museum. 

On the 18th of October we have ‘Welcome: East Lothian Multi-Cultural Day’ from 12-3pm. It’s going to be amazing - just a few of the highlights are: a French Puppet show, Seeds of Thought Poetry Group, Live Music, Burns Recitals, Indian Dancers, and local artist workshops! We’ll also have stalls on Fairtrade, Edinburgh and Lothians Racial Equality Council, Family History and much more. Full details of all events can be found in the Black History Month programme for East Lothian.

 Apart from all that, we’re also coming to the end of another summer season. Dunbar Town House has remained busy with the exhibition Harvest of the Sea generating a wealth of paper fish! It is planned that the Town House will be closed next season for the refurbishment so make your last visits to the ‘old’ town house now!

A Museum for Musselburgh is coming along - you may have noticed the shop front on the High Street with all the lovely old photographs in the window. It will become a museum next year, run by Musselburgh Museum Committee.

Apart from all that, the other big news is that we’re now on Facebook! Become a fan and share your comments please!

Or share your comments with us on here, we’re awfully pleased to hear from you, whatever you’ve got to say. It’s something to keep us occupied over those long winter months… 

Time flies. I can’t believe that it’s my last week to work in ELMS. Feel sad… Before I leave, I would like to introduce some museums in Taiwan on the museum blog. I will present two museums, National Palace Museum and Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum. Hope you like them. 

The National Palace Museum in Taiwan collects a variety of collections about ancient Chinese culture, such as jade, ceramic, calligraphy and paintings. For example, the Jadeite Cabbage. It looks fresh, close to the real one, fantastic.

The MeatStone. I suppose that many visitors would like to taste it because that it looks delicious! Apart from the jade and stone, you can visit other exhibitions by the web site.

 In the Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, the museum displays exhibitions, all related to ceramics. The museum has developed pottery-teaching online learning resources, like http://kids.ceramics.tpc.gov.tw/zh-tw/Hands/Hands1.aspx  As a result, visitors can access it without time and space limitation. Teachers can access it to support their classes as well.  

 The two museums in Taiwan are different from East Lothian Council Museums. All of the museums can play different roles and they can attract different visitors. It is good to introduce the two museums in Taiwan on the museum blog, which is really interactive. Hope you like the cabbage and the meatstone. Yummy!!