Orphaned Objects

Bit busy lately writing a major funding bid for my day job so there's not been much progress with the digitising of my family negatives. However, the mountain of job specs, tender briefs, budget spreadsheets and myriad other supporting documents I've been accumulating for this application has made me consider how much paperwork even a small museum can generate. I'm thinking particularly of ...museum policies. Policies, policies, policies. Museums have policies for everything - a policy for what you collect, a policy for looking after the stuff you collect, a policy for cataloguing the stuff you collect, a policy for training people to look after the stuff you collect, a policy for disposing of things you no longer collect, a policy for engaging visitors with what you collect, a policy for making sure what you collect doesn't get stolen or go on fire or get wet, a policy for planning what you're going to do with the stuff you collect over the next five years, a polic...

 It's bright today. Really bright. Bright sun high in the sky, white snow on the ground, bright bright bright. Over my lunch break I decided to run a few 35mm negatives through the scanner just to keep grinding away at the Sisyphean task of digiting my family's photo collection. First scan appeared thus; Attack of the Black Smudge! Coming to a cinema near you. Ugh, this isn't good. And most peculiar - there's no marks at all on the negative, nary even a speck of dust as that gets blown off first. This is very annoying and I'm getting all hot and bothered. Ah! Hot and bothered in the glare of the incredibly bright wintery-snowy-reflecty sun. One quick shut of the curtains and a rescan later and; Absence of the Black Smudge! Coming to a cinema near you, but not very exciting. There we go. So the scanner, perched near the window, was getting overwhelmed by the sun blazing in one side. This hasn't been an issue so far given that this project has taken place in the d...

In December 2015 I gave a presentation at a 'Heritage Show + Tell'  event in Leeds. The event rules were simple - three slides, three minutes, tell a story about your project. I've lost count of how many seminars/lectures/talks/expositions/etc/and-so-on I've sat through at heritage sector events, but this was one of the first formal events I'd spoken at and had to, like, dress smartly and that.  Some of those drawings are mine. Drawing is not among my skillz. I was working for Scarborough Museums Trust heading an Arts Council audience development project, part of which involved commissioning a pop-up 'Museum of Scarborough' which would tour the community and be an enthralling interactive celebration of all things Scarborial.   This was an ideal project to roll-out for the Show + Tell evening, but my quandary was how to make my 3 minute presentation lively, enthralling and in keeping with the quirky nature of the pop-up project - an issue exacerbated by my ...