Tag Archives: MERL

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu…

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by Matthew Abel, Museum Studies Student at the University of Reading

Dissertations are done, exams are over, and, like the Von Trapp children (who we appear to be channelling in this photo), it is nearly time for me and my fellow Museum Studies finalists to say goodbye to the University of Reading. The last three years have definitely changed my life for the better, and in this post I thought I’d share a few thoughts for anyone thinking of applying for a Museum Studies course at Reading.

Yes, Museum Studies is a thing…

When I was looking for a course, I knew that Museum Studies existed as a subject and that I wanted to study it. But pretty much everyone outside the museum world doesn’t seem to know this, so be prepared for a lot of “You study museums?”, “What’s that all about?” and my personal favourite “Oh, that’s… different”.

… but it can mean different things

There are not many undergraduate Museum Studies courses out there (it’s usually a postgraduate subject), but their content can vary significantly. For example, Reading’s courses are combined with either Archaeology or Classics modules, while others have more of an Art History focus. So read the syllabuses thoroughly and think about your own interests. Having worked in museums for a few years before uni, I wanted a course that was practical, relevant and comprehensive (and wasn’t just Art History in disguise), so when I read the Museum Studies and Archaeology syllabus, I knew it was the one for me.

And it is very practical

If you are thinking of taking Museum Studies, it’s pretty likely that you want to work in museums, so the course is very much focused on trying to make that happen. There are lots of practical elements, ranging from object handling seminars, skills-based assignments and museum visits, to an assessed work placement in Part 2 and a group exhibition module in Part 3. If you take the Archaeology option, you also have the chance to attend the Field School over summer. I’m definitely an indoor person so the Field School wasn’t for me, but I’m very grateful I was offered the chance to go on a real archaeological dig! Field experience is essential if you want to be an archaeologist, yet many universities no longer run their own field schools, so Reading has a real edge here.

Image: Installing a display for the group exhibition module in Part 3.

Grab every experience

Because Museum Studies is such a vocational course, you will definitely get more out of it if you can do some museum work or volunteering while you study. This allows you to put what you learn in lectures into practice and network with other people in the sector. As well as the placements mentioned earlier, there are also lots of opportunities to get work experience outside the course. In Part 2, I got a summer job through the Reading Internship Scheme (RIS), which offers paid internships with local companies in various sectors, and is only available to University of Reading students. I spent eight weeks with the Curatorial department at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley on Thames, which was a wonderful experience. I helped install a temporary exhibition, learnt some new collections management skills, and even got taken on a “works outing” to Henley Royal Regatta!

Image: Installing a temporary exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum with Assistant Curators Caroline Brown and Chelsea Eves.

The staff are great

I probably should have mentioned them earlier, but the course lecturers, Rhi Smith and Nicola Pickering, are brilliant too! Rhi’s background is in archaeology and anthropology, and Nicola is an art and architectural historian, so their combined expertise provides a really broad insight into the museum world. Some of the staff at The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), where the course is based, also deliver some of the content, such as object handling sessions and guest lectures. This is a real bonus as you are learning from people who actually do the kind of jobs you are hoping to do. And who better to learn from than the people who brought you such social media sensations as this surprisingly effective mousetrap and this magnificent woolly hero?

Reading is nicer than you probably think it is

Finally, if you like the sound of everything else but think Reading isn’t a very interesting place to live, think again! I was really surprised by how much cultural activity there is in Reading, and initiatives like Place of Culture and the Abbey Quarter are all about promoting this and trying to engage people with it. One of my highlights was seeing the cell where Oscar Wilde was imprisoned during the Inside project at Reading Prison. I also got to meet historian Dr Lucy Worsley when her father Peter did a book launch at The MERL (fun fact: Peter Worsley used to be a professor at Reading and Lucy herself was born here). The British Museum is even planning to open a new research centre in Reading in partnership with the University, so there is a lot to look forward to.

Image: Meeting Lucy Worsley at The MERL.

If you are considering a Museum Studies course at Reading, I hope this post has shown what a great opportunity it can be. As someone who dropped out of another uni at 18 and vowed never to go back, I never even expected to finish a degree course, let alone enjoy it so much. But this just proves that if you find the right course at the right uni, and do it at the right time for you, anything is possible. Auf Wiedersehen!

Squeaky bum time: new year, new exhibition

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by Matthew Abel, Museum Studies Student at the University of Reading

 

It’s a new year and that means two things. One, we’re all still a bit fat after Christmas. And two, there are just a few weeks until we Part 3 students launch our Belonging exhibition! It is, in the words of Sir Alex Ferguson, “squeaky bum time”.

Belonging is a multi-site exhibition which draws on the varied University of Reading collections to explore issues around inclusion, exclusion, loneliness and sense of place through five themes – Countryside, Culture, Clubs, Conflict and Community. Because Museum Studies is so brilliant, this exhibition is actually our ‘final project’ and doing a dissertation is optional (although three of us have foolishly chosen to do both!). In this post, we are each going to tell you a bit about the work we’re doing to put our exhibition together:

 

Matthew Abel (Countryside) – You could tell so many stories with a broad subject like the countryside, but I’ve been focusing on three key subthemes. Making Rural Communities considers how the idea of community is constructed in the countryside, and how people come to feel that they belong in rural areas. Right to Roam explores how the law has historically excluded people from the countryside, and looks at the ongoing campaign to improve public access. Finally, with immigration dominating the headlines, Seasonal Workers reveals how the countryside has always depended on migrant labour, and how these workers have been treated. Putting these displays together involves lots of practical work too, from planning case layouts to working out how to hang works of art – I am pleased to say I now know what ‘hollow wall fixings’ are! Emily and I will also be donning our boots soon to interview a local walking group!

Image: Two ramblers in a footpath protest at Ribchester, Lancashire, in October 1930. The Museum of English Rural Life, SR OSS PH5/J53.

Samuel Peters (Conflict) – War, what is it good for? Not just a catchy song, this question is one that has plagued history throughout time. Conflicts are quite often the markers used to recognise the passage of time. Centenaries marking various conflicts are commonplace, these happen to remind us of what has come before, the devastation, the loss of life, the irreversible damage. But do humans ever learn? After one war comes another, humans appear to be intrinsically linked to conflict, an inescapable inevitability. As tensions around the world appear to rise yet again, are we moving towards another conflict, is nuclear devastation on the horizon? Throughout conflicts and throughout wars people live, ordinary people, they leave behind innocent markers, things which would not appear to be from within a war, it is through these that we hope to analyse the extent to which humans belong to conflict; and answer the question, what is war good for?

Charlotte Rout (Culture) – To belong is the feeling that you are in the right place or suitable place; to feel happy or comfortable in a situation. Identifying to a culture can give people a sense of belonging and the feeling of being secure and accepted within a society. In the modern world, culture and self-identity are entirely linked, and when the two are disconnected this can often affect a person’s wellbeing, due to feeling isolated or excluded. Themes for this case include migration and globalization and how these can affect the way that individuals feel, especially when they feel that they cannot connect with a culture, including in the place that they call home. This case will use the University of Reading’s Art Collection and display pieces such as Max Weber’s Brooklyn Bridge and Robert Gibbings’ Man in a Tree to show how migration and globalization affect culture and how people feel that they belong.

Emily Thomas (Community) – Community connections are vital to museums and can be difficult for universities to build. ‘Threshold Fear’ is a phrase that many museums are aware of and defines what many people feel when visiting museums in which they feel they do not belong. This could also define the problem many university museums experience, so section will attempt to break some of these barriers down, with a case that will hopefully be held within the Reading Central Library’s exhibition area. It will use stories and images of children brought to Reading during World War II from the evacuee archive, displaying a time when community was a fundamental part of society. The case will also display responses to the word ‘home’ by Berkshire primary school children, bringing the thoughts of past and present Berkshire communities together. A second similar case will also be placed within MERL which will demonstrate the value of MERL’s Reading Room, a useful research facility that anyone can use.

           

Image: Activity sheet created for primary school children on which they could respond to the word ‘home.

Lucy Wilkes (Clubs) – Optimising each of the university’s collections is one of the main aims of this exhibition project. Because of this, we began to think about the Ure Museum and what ancient artefacts could offer in terms of showing a sense of belonging. We quickly realised that one way that ancient people experienced inclusion was via symposiums; elite males would gather to drink and socialise, and this made them feel that they belonged to a group. Women and slaves were excluded from these get-togethers. These ideas are the foundation of the ‘Belonging to Clubs’ case. This subtheme will subsequently explore the idea of belonging to clubs in other ages and communities, linking the Ure collections to the university archives, to discover whether the ancient idea of belonging through gender exclusive clubs has disappeared or simply evolved. Researching this subtheme has involved reading both student newspapers and theatre programmes from the 1920s, and it is surprising how quickly my enthusiasm for archives has grown!

Belonging will run from 20 February to 13 April 2018, with displays at The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, Reading Central Library, and the University of Reading’s Department of Archaeology. You will find maps at each site to help you find your way around. We hope you enjoy it!

Museums in Reading

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by Gracie Price, Museum Studies Student at the University of Reading

We are very lucky in Reading to have many different museums in the town, covering a variety of subjects. There are eight museums within Reading (one is slightly outside the town however) and so far, I have managed to visit five of these and volunteer in two of them. Reading museums are benefiting from lots of renovation projects, which are improving the access to these museums for the public.

The Museum of English Rural Life

This is the first museum I visited when I started studying at Reading – mainly because we have the pleasure of using the building for our lectures and as I work in the front of house team there. The Museum of English Rural Life (The MERL) reopened last year after a redevelopment funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The museum tells the story of rural life in England and has a gallery highlighting some of the Ladybird book art work collection. The MERL is an excellent place for us to learn about museums and we often get ‘behind the scenes’ tours and talks from museum staff.

Reading Museum

Reading Museum is in the centre of the town in a beautiful historic building shared with the town hall. The museum is currently in the process of redeveloping their Abbey Quarter gallery, but it is remaining open alongside the work. The museum has galleries covering a range of subjects including Silchester Roman town, Huntley and Palmers biscuits, Natural History, and the Bayeux Tapestry. One of the main things the museum is known for is their loans box service which started in 1911, the service offers boxes of objects to schools and groups for use in educational activities and they now have 1,500 boxes available.

Cole Museum of Zoology

The Cole is the second museum I volunteer in which is housed on campus at the University. Here I work with the microscope slide collection working to catalogue and organise the collection to improve access for researchers. We recently had a large increase in our volunteer force as the museum will be moving to a new building in 2019, so work is underway designing new displays, cataloguing the collection, and most importantly, to fundraise for the move. The museum was established from the collection of zoology lecturer Francis J. Cole in the 20th century and contains around 3,500 specimens, of which around 400 are on display at any one time. The star of the museum however is the complete male elephant skeleton who greets visitors as they enter the museum – he may also be the hardest one to move when it comes to it too!

Royal Berkshire Medical Museum

Housed in a building just off the Royal Berkshire hospital the Medical Museum provides a compact exploration of the history of medicine. The museum is run by volunteers and is opened on the second and fourth Sunday of the month for visitors and I would suggest you visit. The collection contains many examples of medical equipment and medicines including an iron lung used in the museum and a jar of live leeches. The volunteers are very knowledgeable and were very happy to discuss the collections with me and answer my questions which always makes a visit more engaging.

Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology

The Ure Museum is another museum housed on the campus and it contains a collection of mainly Greek pottery but also some Egyptian artefacts established by the University’s first professor of Classics, Professor P.N. Ure and his wife Dr A.D. Ure. The museum displays the collection of Greek pottery through 9 different themes, including Myth and Religion, Education and Body Beautiful. There are also cases exploring some of the Egyptian artefacts as well as the history of the museum and how the artefacts ended up within the collection.

Other museums

There are three museums in Reading I am still yet to visit, however I am hoping to rectify this in the coming months as they all look brilliant and I have heard wonderful things about them all. These museums are the Riverside Museum at Blake’s Lock, the Reading Typography collection on the main university campus and the Berkshire Aviation Museum, which is a short car or bus ride outside of the main town.

Gracie Price, Museum Studies Student at the University of Reading

Life after Reading #2 Katy Jackson (Wiener Library)

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Welcome Week begins today for our new students so it seems like a good time to celebrate the excellent work being done by former students. Katy trained as tour guide with us ages ago and was put back in contact a few weeks back. She is now Community and Outreach Officer at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide and kindly agreed to write a blog post in our ‘Life after Reading’ series.

Katy at the Wiener Library

Katy at the Wiener Library

What are you doing now?

I am the Community and Outreach Officer at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide[1] based in Russell Square, London. I am responsible for the overall community and outreach strategy at the Library in line with a four year Heritage Lottery Fund project which is focused on widening audience engagement with the Library and its collections. I enjoy the diversity of my role; one day I can be networking at a foreign embassy, another day I can be running an exhibition project with an activist group. My other key responsibilities include events management, volunteer management, partnership brokering and social media PR and marketing.

How did your time at Reading prepare you for this line of work?

Academically, my time at Reading gave me transferable skills which I use every day in my job. I regularly give presentations and speak in public where I also put to use the historical knowledge I gained in my degree. A large part of my day to day work is research based whether it’s finding speakers for an event, looking for potential partner organisations, contacting community groups or researching content for an exhibition.

Reading gave me the opportunity to gain professional experience outside of my degree. I volunteered as a tour guide and family learning assistant at the Museum of English Rural Life[2]. Additionally, I volunteered as an assistant archivist at the REME Museum of Technology[3] during my second year and was offered a temporary paid position for September 2009, before I began my third year. Both these opportunities offered me the chance to learn about working in museum environments and confirmed my aspiration to work in the museum sector.

What training/experience did you get after leaving Reading?

Prior to beginning at Reading I had volunteered at Portsmouth Records Office and City Museum[4], which included a short stint at Portsmouth D-Day Museum[5], so in addition to my volunteering work in Reading I had already built up my practical experience. After finishing my BA I knew that I wasn’t finished with studying and I was torn between doing an MA in Museum Studies or an MA related to the area of history I was interested in (20th century conflict). Despite wanting to work in the museum sector, I decided that having a more specialised masters in history would make me stand out and so I chose the MA War, Culture and History at the University of Manchester[6]. During my MA I had the opportunity to apply for work placement, which I was lucky enough to get, at the Imperial War Museum North[7] on a community outreach project. The combination of my work experience and my degrees meant that I was well placed to work at an institution like the Wiener Library.

If you could give just one piece of advice for current students what would it be?

My advice for current students is this: do everything. Take every opportunity to volunteer, network and get your name known. Build up a professional profile using social media, Twitter is particularly good for that as you can interact with organisations. Don’t forget to use your initiative, just because an organisation isn’t advertising for volunteers or work placements it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask anyway. Don’t forget it’s also important to do things that aren’t necessarily related to your career like joining sports clubs or societies – it will make you a more rounded person. Social skills are equally as important as anything else.

I know the question asked for one piece of advice but I just want to finish with this one point: do what you love. No one ever worked in museums to become a millionaire, but we do usually have a high level of job satisfaction. As Confucius said, ‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’.

The Wiener Library holds Britain’s largest archives relating to the Holocaust and Nazi era. Follow the @wienerlibrary for updates on events, exhibitions and more.

Follow @Katy_WL for day to day community and outreaching as well as other museumy stuff.

Welcome to our new blog!

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As it says above this is a brand spanking new blog. My name is Rhianedd or ‘Rhi’ Smith and I’m the Museum Studies Programme Director and novice blogger. This blog is for museum studies students and researchers at Reading and beyond. I have big plans that one day it will also be written in part by students. I am definitely planning on press-ganging my colleagues into posting and I will flag up interesting posts on blogs written by folks at Reading or people in the wider world.

We’ve been teaching Museum Studies at Reading since 2005, although there is a longer history which I will try to track in an upcoming post. The optional modules we devised back in 2005 were so popular that we are offering two joint degrees, BA Classical and Museum Studies and BA Archaeology and Museum Studies, from 2013/2014.

I want this blog to be a central place for information and discussion which students and researchers (here and elsewhere) can eventually tap into and contribute to.The initial posts are going to be written by yours truly. I’m going to give some background to the museums and collections here and our approach to teaching and research with collections. However, I’m also going to blog about exhibitions, projects, conferences and anything that takes my interest – hence the word ‘musings’ in the tagline.

So to conclude here’s a really old photo of students having a lively discussion about a pig carcass scraper in our stores. I like it because it shows how even the most mundane (and kind of disgusting) object can spark a conversation. Hopefully that’s what this blog will be –  a way to spark a conversation.

Students in the store