UKRG Event: Magical Mystery Store - The Protest Lab

The Protest Lab wants your objects – how to manage an experimental loan agreement

Disrupt? Peterloo and Protest is an exhibition that aims to highlight the relevance of the Peterloo Massacre (1819) to current campaigns for democracy. The People’s History Museum (PHM) is asking members of the public to bring in their own objects to be put on open display alongside original Peterloo artefacts. Sam Jenkins, Collections Officer, told the audience how PHM approached loans management in such an experimental exhibition format.

In recent years, the model for co-curation has been applied by museums working with different communities. By pulling out recent stories of protest PHM is encouraging its audience to consider what everyday acts of protest they engage with. Objects from a march, like placards or badges, will be shown alongside objects like disposable coffee cups or a lipstick. Drop-in days have been organised from March – September 2019 where individuals can bring in their items of protest and discuss their story with a member of staff. This cultural exchange of insight and expertise between museum staff and members of the public contributes to the sector’s move towards better representation of previously unheard narratives.

However, the challenge faced by PHM was how to manage all of these personal items moving in and out of their care. As Lyn Stevens Tweeted during the event, complex situations call for simple loan agreements!

One form was drafted to capture all of the information PHM needed about the object, including a signature agreeing to the clauses listed in the image above. Individuals confirm that they are the legal owner and that they are lending their object at their own risk – a smart decision made by PHM as the items are on open display. Object descriptions and their connected stories of protest are also captured on this loan agreement. Whilst people love the idea of writing the label for their object they aren’t necessarily prepared to write it at the time of depositing the item which can cause a delay in proceedings. To make the loans process clearer, handling tables were introduced at the drop off-events to provide a platform for discussion between potential lenders and PHM staff.

An exciting element of this project is that the exhibition will grow and change as new objects come in throughout the year. PHM will be able to engage with stories of protest that are happening now as, in theory; individuals bring in an object connected to a march that happened last week! The collection is a showcase of democracy so it reflects a variety of stories but it also highlights some gaps. Whilst the collection is largely left-leaning this project has found that the people it is trying to engage with most are probably out protesting when the drop-off days are scheduled. Social media is used to encourage people to bring in their items of protest and as many groups organise protests on spaces like Twitter, this feels like an appropriate platform to advertise PHM’s experimental project.

The Protest Lab project is in the same vein of a paper from earlier in the day entitled ‘But what if we tried?’ at Touchstones, Rochdale Art Gallery. Projects like these are exactly what the sector needs to further encourage a wider range of institutions to be brave enough to take on challenging subjects. PHM provides opportunities for people to be inspired by ‘ideas worth fighting for’ and I think most would agree that broader community engagement and representation in collections is an idea worth fighting for.

Written by Louise Hanwright, Project Reveal Loans Officer, National Trust Scotland

UKRG Event: Magical Mystery Store - How do you document a Victorian anti-garroting collar?

How do you document a Victorian anti-garroting collar? Introducing museum collection management practices to the Metropolitan Police Service Heritage Centre.
The Metropolitan Police Service was founded in 1829 and has two museum collections. The Crime Museum, formerly the Black Museum, was established in 1874 as the repository for criminal evidence. It is housed at New Scotland Yard and is not officially open to the public, although in the 19th century celebrities were able to visit, and it provided the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels. The Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre opened more recently, in 2009. As a museum of the police service, it collects and displays items related to the day-to-day business of the police, such as uniforms and equipment. 

Dr. Clare Smith took up the post of Centre Manager in 2018 and was faced with the immediate and huge challenge of cataloguing and classifying thousands of items. Existing documentation was sparse, slightly erratic and below museum standard; often objects had been classified by name of owner rather than type, demonstrating the ingrained police practice of recording everything as evidence with a story to be told. Being forced to re-catalogue the collection has resulted in some nice surprises – for example, the service’s medal collection previously thought to be 300 in size is in fact three times as large.

Knowing that 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of women in the Met police, Clare decided to concentrate on material that could be used in a forthcoming exhibition on female police officers. Thus, giving herself a focus and a deadline to see tangible results.

Clare’s simplified themed displays and policewomen exhibition have proved a great success with the Centre tripling its visitor figures. 

Another major challenge for Clare has been to learn the police language of her superiors (note to reader: SPOC means single point of contact, not the Star Trek character!), to educate them on the importance of museum practices and to generally raise the Heritage Centre’s profile within the Met’s strategic priorities.

Clare’s next cataloguing project will be to tackle the uniform collection. She is also aiming to tell the story of the police without bias or backing away from difficult stories and to give a voice to religions, races and groups who have not previously been represented in the displays. Alongside this, Clare is busy writing policies on loans and acquisitions, establishing networks with other police museums and volunteers, preparing for a move from West London to Woolwich and is already starting to think about how to mark the bicentenary of the Met in 2029. Good luck Clare! You have a big job on your hands and I, for one, can’t wait to see the results.

Written by Hannah Kauffman, Deputy Registrar, V&A Museum

UKRG Event: Magical Mystery Store - Punk 1976-78

Punk 1976-78, a national touring exhibition collaboration between the British Library, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Central Library

The first talk of the day was by Professor Colin Fallows from John Moores University and Polly Mills, Touring Exhibitions Co-ordinator at the British Library on their collaborative Punk exhibition at Liverpool Central Library, November 2018 – January 2019.

This was the third iteration of the Punk exhibition since it opened at the British Library in London in 2016 and toured to Sunderland’s Museum and Winter Gardens in 2017. Each venue re-interpreted the exhibition differently to embed the topic within their local punk culture. 

Over the past 20 years the John Moores University has established a large punk collection and world-class archive of counter culture. Professor Moores is an expert on the subject having curated punk exhibitions in nine different countries over the past 12 years. The exhibition was the result of a long-standing relationship with the British Library who had themselves been actively collecting punk material for a while. The content of the exhibition was a mixture of loans from both institutions alongside some private collections.

The setting of a library – a quiet space for study or contemplation – appears an unusual choice for an exhibition on punk – the anarchic, loud and demonstrative music genre. The curators played on this unusual juxtaposition by displaying large photos in the reading room areas of Liverpool Central Library.

The exhibition covered 1976 – 1978 and focused around five main themes: Before the Storm; Be responsible, demand the impossible; Punk goes overground; Punk rock explosion and; Now form a band. Objects and artefacts were distributed across several spaces in the library including parts of the original historic buildings. Special permission was granted to remove Audubon’s ‘Birds of America’ from the Oak Room and display singles covers and a leather jacket in its place. The beautiful Hornby library was also taken over by the exhibition where material was carefully placed, not scattered, and individually presented in reference to the Edwardian setting. 

Polly Mills spoke about the aims of the British Library’s touring programme, the library network which sparked the collaboration with Liverpool Central Library, and the challenges of staging an exhibition in this environment, such as security not meeting GIS standards, working with AV material and the tight budget meaning some copyright costs were prohibitive.

The benefits clearly outweighed any challenges though; a main one being the opportunity to reach a non-museum audience. Having visited Liverpool Central Library, I have seen first-hand what a well-used and loved resource it is. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, it was filled with people of all ages studying for exams, accessing the internet, reading newspapers, or simply having a cup of tea at the café. Despite experiencing threats to their survival in recent years, libraries still represent the heart of communities.

A legacy of the exhibition is a small permanent display in the main reading room on Eric’s, the Liverpool nightclub which hosted a Sex Pistols gig in 1976, which showcases ephemera - posters, flyers, contracts and tickets – reminding locals and visitors of Liverpool’s musical and cultural heritage beyond the Beatles!

Written by Hannah Kauffman, Deputy Registrar, V&A 

UKRG Event: Magical Mystery Store "But what if we Tried"

But what if we tried? Bryan Beresford (Curatorial & Community Engagement Coordinator, Rochdale Arts and Heritage Service) and Harry Meadley, Artist

Touchstones Rochdale Art Gallery is part of a larger facility managed by Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust (Link4Life). At the UKRG Magical Mystery Store event at Tate Liverpool, artist Harry Meadley talked about the challenge he set the gallery. Namely, to display as much of the collection as possible in a single exhibition. The collection contains 1600 objects and the exhibition space consisted of 3 galleries. The team at Touchstones knew it was an impossible task, but zealously endeavoured to present both normally unseen pieces and processes to the public. A key element of this involved turning the institution inside out. For instance, staff held meetings in the gallery space, T-frames and opened crates were exhibited and conservators and technicians were filmed explaining their roles. The gallery presented the films shot by Harry in the gallery store, a space that isn’t normally open to the public. The films captured staff members discussing the challenges of producing contemporary exhibitions. They also captured frank discussions about the obstacles the gallery has faced during its transition from a regional museum to charitable status.

The exhibition ultimately contained 360 works and purposely failed to present themes and narratives. Pieces were presented according to selections of accession numbers and resulted in a varied and colourful show. The installation shots captured how the eclectic hang afforded visitors the opportunity to appreciate the diversity of works in their civic collection.

Bryan Beresford (Curatorial & Community Engagement Coordinator at Touchstones) explained that the exhibition engaged visitors and their feedback highlighted that they valued the gallery’s effort to not only hang as much as possible but also to make them privy to the process. Harry and Bryan explained that like other councils under austerity measures, Rochdale Council had questioned selling parts of their collection. I don’t think I was alone in thinking how brave it was of Touchstones to embark on a project like this. It was clear from the presentation and video clips that Touchstones and Rochdale Council were under immense financial pressure. It was encouraging to hear that visitors enjoyed the exhibition and that their feedback along with good press (including coverage in national papers) helped the Council keep sight of the fact that the collection is a cultural asset worth conserving and celebrating rather than flogging.

My take away from Harry and Bryan’s talk was that asking unconventional questions of ourselves like, in this case, ‘But what if we tried?’ can lead to innovative displays, enhanced visitor experience and strengthened institutional relationships.

Written by Rebecca Bailey, Assistant Exhibitions Manager, Royal Academy of Arts