An Inspirational Case from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

This blog was first published at: http://camunivmuseums.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/an-inspirational-case-from-the-museum-of-archaeology-and-anthropology/

Every object in a museum can tell many stories. The story of how it looks. The story of what it was used for. The story of how it was made. But very often museums may overlook the need to tell the crucial story of how an object was collected – a story that is fundamental to how an object ended up in a museum. On the top floor of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology I discovered a case full of objects with just such a story; one that I found particularly inspiring.

The Clarke Hall, on the top floor of the building, presents the museum’s international archaeological collections. A panel as you enter the gallery proclaims it a ‘work in progress’ with the displays being part of a collaborative project with visitors in order to further develop them in the future. Having studied an undergraduate degree in Archaeology and Geography I was curious about the objects in the ‘open storage’ cases with row upon row laid out for comparison. However, the case that particularly stands out in my memory of that initial visit is the one dedicated to the archaeologist, Dorothy Garrod.

The case contains a number of prehistoric objects from the excavations she oversaw, as well as a selection of cigarette tins that were used as find containers as they were readily to hand. Elsewhere in the gallery there are cases and panels detailing the influence of other eminent archaeologists on the collections and the profession as a whole, but it was the feminist story of Dorothy Garrod that stood out to me.

You can find much more detail about Garrod’s career online, but I shall quote from the case label for a summary:

Dorothy Garrod worked with a field crew, largely of women, recruited from the Palestinian villages. At home in Cambridge, her work was recognized by her election to the Disney Chair of Archaeology in 1939 – the University’s first woman professor. Small and shy, she was a feminine anomaly in a man’s world. Today she is recognised as a feminist pioneer within a university now better balanced between women and men.

When we give objects labels that describe their materials, their origin, their function and their age we often resort to trying to tell the ‘original’ story, the narrative that we think the object was created to be part of. But objects don’t stop existing when they are lost and found, sold and bought, excavated and collected and these processes add to the stories connected to the object. I found it refreshing to view prehistoric objects being used to tell a story of advancement towards gender equality that is under a century old, one that more people could perhaps relate to, alongside the usual information on its type, origin and age. I was inspired and reassured by Garrod’s story and I believe this case has incredible potential to demonstrate that Archaeology is a profession where you can succeed regardless of gender.

As you leave The Clarke Hall, there are questionnaires asking for your feedback on the gallery contents and what archaeology means to you. I am full of praise for the attempts to show the influence of archaeologists over archaeology, yet I would have loved to be able to search through the collection catalogue whilst in the gallery to uncover some of the hidden tales of the hundreds of objects in ‘open storage’. Being on display is a fantastic start over being hidden in a dark storeroom away from public view, but access to the data held about each object would enable visitors to delve into the invisible aspects and craft stories based on their own curiosity – far more than could ever be told on the walls of this one gallery.

I joined the University of Cambridge Museums in July on a temporary assignment as a Marketing Assistant for the summer months spending most of my time working with The Polar Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In October, I will be starting a PhD at the University of Sheffield where I will be looking into how museums can create spaces to encourage curiosity and innovation. Spending time exploring and thinking about the University of Cambridge Museums as part of my role here has inspired several possible trains of thought that I will have to investigate further!

Pippa Gardner, Marketing Assistant, University of Cambridge Museums

Getting Digital - The First #TeamDigital Meeting

On Saturday 28th July, I set out to London for the inaugral meeting of #TeamDigital - a panel of about 15 young women from Girlguiding with an enthusiasm for all things digital. The team is just one of the many ways that members and non-members can get involved in the development of Girlguiding's digital strategy. If you'd like to get involved too you can find out more on the microsite and blog at digital.girlguiding.org.uk.

The day started out with the inevitable mix of ice breakers then, having discovered we had a pilot, several cat owners and a number of people with bizarre connections to famous comedians, we could start work proper. We took a whistlestop tour of the digital strategy for Girlguiding so far with its three pillars of Involve, Enable and Champion, and were so eager to contribute we were coming up with ideas and suggestions even before the questions had been asked.


Next we were handed over to the team from YooMee to take on the website personas in an ultracompact version of the workshops they've been running up and down the country. Advice is available here is you want to run one of these workshops with your own group too! The five different personas we considered each had a different level of engagement with Girlguiding from the no-nothing to the passionately involved young woman. I think it is perhaps testament to the complex nature of how members aged 16-24 are engaged with Girlguiding that we found our comments of what was needed from the website didn't fit neatly into the categories of 'girl member' or 'adult leader' - what more could you expect from an age group that is technically invovled as both?


At the end of this session we had to pick out the suggestions we wanted to highlight and I choose to explain my reasoning and thoughts around providing an acitvities database that isn't locked away within a members area. My personal feeling is that at its core Girlguiding is an organisation that exists to provide activities that empower girls and young women. As such the aim of the website should be to provide those opportunities, not to have the sole purpose of converting interest into another record on our database - the website should be the start of the journey in the movement, the place where the first acitivities are discovered and completed. So to achieve this I advocated a database of activities, which could be added to, commented upon, rated and tagged into categories by visitors to the website. It should have a section of related activities (in the style of Amazon's 'customers also purchased' feature) that could be personalised to be age specific and linked to awards and badges if the user was logged in. That way we could also facilitate members moving easily between the activities of one section and another e.g. Brownies to Guides, rather than the compartmentalised section websites that exist at the moment.

From there it was time for lunch and onwards to the 'Inspirational Speaker' slot. Kajal Odedra from Change.org spoke to us about her job, how she got there and her motivations. It was interesting to note the higher percentage of women winning petitions on Change.org than men (even though men start more petitions) and I'd be really interested to see further research as to how platforms like this can help women and minority genders to become more successful advocates and campaigners. It was disheartening a little to hear about the route into the sector being via internships and london-centric, but I am optimistic for the role of digital tech in taking campaigning to the regions and beyond.

Then it was time to tackle social media. We brain stormed and quickly polled the networks that we used amongst us with familiar big names coming out on top. Discussion started on how Girlguiding could better use the various platforms and I was struck by the different interpretations of this statement. Some (myself included) took 'Girlguiding' in the question to mean the office staff who manage the national accounts, whereas others included how unit leaders and girls themselves could use the platforms. I guess pragmatically it was the social media manager who would read our flipcharts, but then programme resources and articles in Guiding magazine could begin to reflect our digital age and give volunteers these case studies of how they can facilitate their involvement in Guiding with social media technologies.

For the last session of the day we gave some digital inputs into an exciting forthcoming new THING in Girlguiding. It's top secret for now so I can't say more but it's going to be AMAZING!

We rounded off the day with a summary of what we want the group to do going forward and concluded to use a Doodle poll to set the date of our meeting in the Autumn - oh how digital of us...

I'm excited at the shape and scope of the project going forward and much of what I thought about during the day will feed into the redevelopment of the Girlguiding Anglia regional website that I am currently working on - particularly taking an agile approach to make sure what we end up with is just right! If you want to get involved in the Girlguiding digital strategy, head over to http://digital.girlguiding.org.uk and sign up to become a digital champion!

The Importance of Culture for Communities

When we talk about culture in relation to development and social issues, we often get fixated on the negatives. We have so many discussions about harmful traditions practices and social norms, culture becomes this obstacle to creating a more just world. In my opinion, the idea of access to cultural resources as a strategy for empowering vulnerable and marginalised groups has a lot more scope for achieving positive results for people that has currently been explored.  

This is why I want to work in museums and in the arts - the potential is there to make life changing differences to communities if culture is harnessed in the right way. 

One such project I read about recently is the Vale Cultura, a $20 a month allowance for the lowest income citizens to spend on something cultural. This article in the Washington Post gives a case study of a recipient who will use the money to buy a book to read on her daily commute. The idea behind it? That incorporating books, films, dance, theatre etc into your daily life can improve your well being, is a form of education, and can ultimately help people out of poverty. It will be interesting to see an evaluation of its impact after it has been in place for a while. My concern with this is how it encourages a consumer culture and places a monetary value on the good it can deliver. I don't know the cultural policies of Brazil in detail, but I would place importance on delivering opportunities and activities without monetary association to ensure sustainable cultural institutions.

Arts and culture avital to communities the world over and I am excited by projects in the UK, like The Arts Councils "Creative People and Places" programme trying to increase arts engagement in some of the least engaged areas for the country. My partner works on one of these projects and whilst she faces many challenges in bringing the arts to these rural communities, I keep my fingers crossed for a way to make the project sustainable and for its impact and implementation to outlive the relatively short three years of funding the project has.

A few miles further south, in my home town of Peterborough, I have growing concern at the provision of arts and culture, though with a small hope for the future. A few years ago the city council handed over the responsibility for running their mandated culture and leisure services to an independent charitable trust Vivacity. The trust is given a stipend/grant/budget from the council to go towards the services they have to provide and the idea is that as a charitable trust they are more securely positioned to obtain additional funding to delivery beyond this necessary provision. In their creation they picked up the running of other heritage facilities in the city - Flag Fen which was previous run by its own charitable trust and was facing major financial difficulties, and Longthorpe Tower from English Heritage. Vivacity now run these heritage sites plus the city museum, all the libraries, two theatres, half a dozen gym and sport facilities and a programme of festivals throughout the year. This provision sounds extensive, but it is the monopoly that scares me - particularly the libraries. 

Having not lived in the city for a year, I came back and decided to head to the city's central library to pick out some books for my upcoming holiday. 12.30pmon a Thursday and I walked up to the doors and nearly walked right into them as they didn't open. I looked around perplexed at the five or so other people milling around and one guy perched on the bicycle rack said "you're about the 10th person who has done that, it's not open till 1". Oh so they close for lunch now? I asked. But no, on a Thursday they don't open until 1pm. I was miffed at the inconvenience and also disappointed that a resource I've been able to use at my convenience since before I could read wasn't as accessible as I was used to. 

I took to Twitter when I got home and the Vivacity libraries account informed me that it was due to government cuts and they did a consultation. What jarred with me particularly about this is that by becoming an independant charitable trust, that was meant to be a buffer to the government cuts. They're not a council - yes that's their major funder, but why not think creatively, use library spaces for other services to and keep the resource open the hours expected. On Monday I returned to get my books and discovered they'd closed a whole floor of the building. I'd like to know where the books have gone as they're definitely wasn't a full two floors now crammed into one. 

Yes I may be blowing this out of proportion based on the extremely lack of cultural services elsewhere, but I think it is a slippery slope. If they can cut the opening times by 10-20% and only give government cuts as a reason, if we swallow this answer at face value, we may lose our libraries little by little. As a small child, I would go on trips to our local library in Dogsthorpe, or special big trips to the Central Library in the city centre to pick out books. As a teenager I would cycle into town to go to the library. It was where I first scanned through Naomi Klein's 'No Logo' after a geography project on sweatshops. It played an integral part in shaping my love of learning.

The problem here is two fold. We cannot stand for cuts to services that are so vital to the well being of communities. Libraries, museums and the arts aren't something you can solely rely on a capitalist market or the voluntary 'big society' to create and provide. We also can remain silent when our institutions that were established to provide these community services without the risks being solely run by local government are tokenistic in consulting with the communities they serve. It's not about being open at the least inconvenient hours for the community, it needs to be about finding the means to fund themselves to be as accessible as possible - there are programmes out there, there is funding out there. Don't just roll over and accept governement cuts to culture - else our communities will suffer.