Behind the scenes

 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!! 

It seems to me that the relationship between East Lothian Council Museums and their communities, Dunbar, Musselburgh and Prestonpans is very close. Museum services can be beneficial to the development of communities in different ways, for example, educational functions (loan box delivery and workshops), preserving their cultural spirit, entertainment and town image improvement.  The museum also provides collections and research functions for the public. The East Lothian Council Museums Collections Database, which I have mainly worked on during my placement, can let people see images of objects and obtain relevant information. People, who are interested in social history, art and local culture in East Lothian, can search their information by accessing the system. I am glad that I have a chance to contribute to this site and many thanks to my supervisor, Sheila. She has been patient, showing me how to set up, update and edit the system, which I have never worked on before.

In addition, I have had a variety of work experiences apart from the database, like involvement in education activities, handling, packing, numbering and meeting with an artist and movers. Very interesting! The museum makes efforts to broaden their services with new media strategies, such as the collections database system, mobile tour, Flickr and this Blog. It means the museums can engage with more potential visitors. I have created an account on Flickr, where I can upload many amazing photos, related to our museum services and add comments. The museum blog is the place where curators, volunteers and visitors can convey their ideas interactively. Anyway, I would like to say that I have learned a lot and enjoy working in the museum during this time. Everyone is so nice and I have gained a lot of fantastic experiences in East Lothian. 

 If you are wondering where to play hide-and-seek, Prestongrange Museum may be a good idea. Prestongrange is the industrial heart of East Lothian in the story of Scotland’s Industrial Revolution. I took part in a workshop about how to make a ‘gas mask’, which was very interesting, and was run by Sarah Cowie on the site this summer. Children also played hide-and-seek on the green grass in the sunshine. It was very impressive to see that kids can play and learn at the same time around the industrial heritage at Prestongrange museum.
Furthermore, Prestongrange Museum has a coal mining heritage. The gold mining museum in Taiwan popped into my mind suddenly when I visited this museum. Well, as the guided tour said, it’s not just a museum, where people can visit, it’s a part of local history from the 18th -19th centuries about the industry revolution. The large steam engine is very impressive. I can imagine how difficult it must have been to move it from the port in the 19th century. I can’t believe that workers could stand the noise it made whilst running.

Hi I’m Jenny a volunteer here and my time here is now over *cries*. So now its time for reflection (feel free to skip to the end). Here I’ve learnt a lot of things - the most important being that bacon sandwiches are yummy – and seen a lot of strange sights i.e. a stuffed badger with a broken tail. But what have I actually done here, except drink all the diluting?

For starters I created a database documenting the objects loaned out to the public, which was about as hard as climbing Mount Olympus with a toothpick due to my appalling IT skills!

Then I tried to organise as many loan boxes as possible and I had an uncanny knack for choosing the ones that required the most work on them brilliant!!!

And finally in this compilation of some of the things I have done I sorted out the stock for the shop at Prestongrange which was fun (there was this little Badger which was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen - and judging by what I have seen in my life that doesn’t mean much :D). The hard part was documenting the quantity of each item as I only realised I had to do that after I had sorted the stock into the appropriate boxes and put them away which was frustrating to say the least.

So in conclusion to this glimpse at my life here I learnt a lot and have gained more experience which is what was my goal and so in the words of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy “so long and thanks for all the fish”.

  Prestongrange Museum has become quite the fashionista hot spot over the summer. We’ve had two high profile photo shoots - one for the Museums Journal and one for C & A. Let me explain…

 Joanne Orr, CEO of Museums Galleries Scotland, contacted us to say that she was being featured in the August 2009 edition of the Museums Journal. The Journal is the ‘must-read’ for all those involved in museums in the UK. It comes out each month and contains the latest news, reviews and debates on general museum issues. I love the reviews of new museums or exhibitions - sometimes they are rather ruthless, ala Simon Cowell. Anyway, due to Joanne’s love of industrial heritage, she asked if her photoshoot could take place at Prestongrange. Of course, we said yes. And then spent the next few weeks getting the place looking all shiny (Julie Anne and Philip have to take credit here for their endless to do lists, which were all completed!). The photographs can be seen in this month’s edition of the Museums Journal. Prestongrange looks wonderful - although unfortunately it doesn’t mention anywhere in the magazine which museum it was!

The other photoshoot had quite a different focus - lots of German models and make-up artists! C & A, yes they’re still going on the continent apparently, asked to use Prestongrange as the background for their latest collection. They turned up about 6am one morning and started shooting literally thousands of photographs. It was for their new men’s collection, perhaps for Spring/Summer 2010. We’ve asked to be sent a copy of the final catalogue.

Why not come and visit picturesque Prestongrange and get your photo taken? All the cool people have done…

Curious thing, the Web. The Blogosphere. An occasional wander around can often throw up, um, unsolicited comments all over the place. Take John Muir’s Birthplace as an example. All these are from a wee trawl recently:here and here and here. There’s another, with a pretty horrible picture of me that I don’t even remember being taken: here.

They all have their own reasons for featuring the Birthplace – tourism, work, pilgrimage – but from our point of view it’s interesting to see what folk take away, what the hits and misses are. As we’re not standing asking the posters to fill in a ‘visitor survey’, then perhaps these are our real reflections?

Hey my name is Jenny and I’m a new volunteer here and in the words of Gloria Gaynor “I will survive!” Life here is very busy and today I have to go all the way to Prestongrange – ROAD TRIP!!! – So that’s interesting (to me and probably not to you hahahaha). The totem pole there is amazing I went there with my family a few months ago and my mum walked right passed it, she didn’t even notice! I think she needs new glasses. So anyway the reasons why I came:

1)      I am interested in history and would like to do a history degree so this helps

2)      It gives me more experience of a working environment

3)      My mum wanted me out of the house (joking joking)

 I find the collections room here fascinating as it’s amazing how many artefacts there are! The old typewriter is my favourite though as it reminds me how far the human race has evolved and makes me appreciate what we have NOTE: it looks heavy and hard to use.

I think that my favourite museum has to be the one in Chamber Street, Edinburgh as it has an amazing Egyptian collection and more importantly a fishpond – the fish are so beautiful. The Traprain treasure is also located there and is really worth a look, its located on the ground floor and if you get lost like I did just ask.

So yeah that’s enough from me for now but I will update on my progress, if I have the time!

I know I risk sounding like an over excited teenager (and yes that was a little while ago) but you really really need to see our amazing new online database. So, once you have finished reading this, click on www.elmscollections.org and marvel at the world Kye has created. Not only will the whole of the collection eventually be online (and this will take a while so bear with us) but you can become a registered user and post comments, information, stories, your thoughts, whatever you’d like to say really. Please also comment - tell us what you think of the database.  

On a sadder note Kye and Angus are going to finish up at the end of the month and they will be sorely missed here in Dunbar (and elsewhere in East Lothian too). I have a horrible feeling that we will discover just how much we need them on 1st July, just a few hours too late. Thanks both for all the hard work over the last few years, it has been great having you!

And no, for once this isn’t Sarah (stalwart blogger), nor is it Pete as it says above, it is Kate. 

 It’s a very handling objects themed blog today. Hence the gloves. By that, I mean that I’ve been considering the importance of letting our visitors access our handling collection. 

 Plans for the John Gray Centre are rolling on. For those of you who don’t know, the JGC will be a new museum, library, archives and local history centre in the centre of Haddington.

 At the moment Studioarc, who are designing the museum part, have asked us to come up with more detail about what should actually go in the museum. We’re down to details such as the objects that will go with each display. More bizarrely they’ve asked me to come up with different smells relating to fishing. Any suggestions? It’s part of a multi-sensory display where people will be able to smell and feel what it’s like to be a fisherman. Lovely!!

We had a talk by Bobby Anderson, ELC Countryside Ranger, at Prestongrange Museum on Friday 15th May. The original idea for the event, called Creatures of the Night, was to have a walk outside but of course, that day it was heavy rain and strong winds so all the creatures, including ourselves, were in hiding. Instead he brought lots of stuffed animals and animal props into the Visitor Centre. One visitor got a fright when he produced a live mouse! It was amazing seeing things like a bat up close, and really made me think about the importance of presenting people with objects that they don’t normally get to see. On the other side of this, I was recently at Deep Sea World and got to touch a starfish. Do you know they are hard?! I really wasn’t expecting that! Any suggestions about things you all want to touch in the JGC are therefore most welcome!! Leave your comments as usual.

Finally, some of our wonderful volunteers are assisting with the improvement of our handling collection. Ken is writing up information to go out with our loan boxes so that those borrowing them know a little about the history of the topic. Jenny will be joining us over the summer to help whip our loan boxes back into shape and Catherine is working to develop and extend our costume collection. To quote our Prestongrange Museum Assistant Julie Anne; “Exciting times!”.

That’s it from me for the time-being. Now get out there and touch some museum objects (only those that you’re allowed to, of course).