The  “Hear All About It!” audio trail project, which was funded by the Renaissance East Midlands ‘MuBu‘ scheme,  involved young people creating an audio trail to guide visitors through the museum’s restored period village streets. A key part of the project was to give young people the skills and creative ability to produce the audio trail themselves. The production process included a series of intensive workshops in scriptwriting, storytelling, audio production and drama skills, which were run by Mark and Linda Kempton, the creative writer who was also involved in the project.

The young people then created a series of short audio-dramas based around different features including a stench pipe, tram shelter and a police phone box. The audio guides were made available to download from the museum’s website and are accompanied by an interactive map pinpointing their locations.

The judges were impressed by the engagement of the young people and the potential new visitors that the project would encourage, saying;

“It was an admirable project that engaged a notoriously difficult group (teenagers) and that they demonstrated genuine enthusiasm for the project.  Hear all About It took a creative approach to developing interpretation of street furniture on site which will encourage people to visit.”

Listen to one of the dramas created for the trail, this one focusing on an on-street urinal.

Urinal by Crich Tramway Village

You can download the PDF Press Release announcing the award here.

This is our second heritage award, after our Podcasts From the Past project with the Museum of London won the Digital Access Online Jodie Award.

Renaissance East Midlands commissioned us to train museum staff in social media and digital storytelling, as part of their workforce development programme. Our training would help staff to develop multimedia projects for the organisation’s Museum Buddies (Mubu) programme, which aims to connect museums and audiences through digital media.

Approach

Each Mubu project includes a digital element such as filmmaking, audio, digital art or music, which is shared online. We wanted to make sure that museum staff had the skills and experience needed to develop a wide range of multimedia resources, so we created tailor-made training sessions on digital storytelling, audio podcasts and videos.

The workshops provided practical knowhow, built confidence and inspired creative thinking. We tailored each session to the needs of the regional museums and their specific pressures, such as limited resources and restricted internet access within local authorities.

Outcome

We delivered three practical training sessions over consecutive weeks and it was great to see the delegates’ confidence and abilities grow over this period.

What Renaissance East Midlands says

“It has been a real pleasure working with the sounddelivery team. The workshops for Mubu were consistently high quality, enjoyable and effective – and the training support materials were very useful. We loved the professional yet personable approach; you delivered informative learning sessions and made it great fun at the same time.” Bryony Robins, Mubu project manager and Renaissance regional officer for e-learning at Leicester City Council

When Mansfield Museum’s Museum Development Officer, Jodie Henshaw, discovered that one of the town’s major employer’s was relocating, she knew she had to act fast to preserve a piece of local heritage. The factory, known as the Metal Box, has been producing tins – from coffee to tobacco – for more than 150 years, with generations of local people passing through its gates.

Jodie secured funding from Renaissance East Midlands through the Museum Buddies programme and asked us to work with the museum and the local community to preserve an important part of local history.  

Approach

We put together a bespoke training package and project plan for the museum, with the aim of creating a digital time-capsule of memories from the factory.

sounddelivery’s senior producer, Mark, led a training workshop to teach Jodie and her colleagues about audio recording and editing. We then ran a ‘memory day’ where we invited staff, both past and present, to the museum to record their stories and memories. 

We set up a makeshift recording studio in one of the museum’s offices and carried out interviews throughout the day. It was thrilling to see different generations of local people arrive to talk about their memories of the factory. A reporter from the local paper, the Chad, also came and wrote an article about the day.

After making an initial assessment of the material collected at the memory day, we created an audio plan that outlined the topics and number of podcasts we could produce. The final categories included apprenticeships, health and safety, sports and social clubs, and working families.

Outcome

Every story was fascinating and the project proved to be a great success, preserving a part of Mansfield’s history that would otherwise have been lost. Alongside the audio we also created an audio slideshow to provide an overview of the project. The audio interviews and audio slideshow will form part of an exhibition on the history of the factory which will run in September and October 2011.

What Mansfield Museum says

“The staff at Mansfield Museum have been truly inspired by working with sounddelivery – the guidance and support offered by your team has motivated the museum to look at developing more digital projects, which will in turn improve access to Mansfield Museum and its collections.” Jodie Henshaw, Museum Development Officer, Mansfield Museum

Watch and listen to our work

As one of the biggest employers in Mansfield the Metal Box saw lots of local families working side-by-side. Sisters Rose and Jacqeline Smith sisters worked at the factory in the 1960s. They were often on the production line and found themselves doing the same jobs. Listen to their memories of the factory:

Watch the audio slideshow:

The first of these projects is with Mansfield Museum creating a digital time-capsule of the Metal Box Company factory. The factory has been producing tins for more than 150 years and is about to move production to a brand new site within the town. Mansfield Museum has been working with the factory to help preserve some of the paperwork, tins and artwork that occupy large areas of the Victorian factory. So we will be working with employees past and present to collect oral history recordings, videos, and audio slideshows to ensure the memories of the Metal Box Company are preserved.

Our second MuBu project is with The National Tramway Museum in Matlock. There we will be working with a local specialist performing arts school to develop an audio trail. The guide will incorporate opportunities that spark discussion about the Museum’s collections (particularly the street furniture) exploring the why, what, how and when. The collection of street furniture is currently not interpreted and this project will enable young people to research and develop interpretation of the objects.

The 5 sessions we ran form part of the Stories of the World project – a cornerstone of the Cultural Olympiad – allowing local people to become ‘curators’ of the collections and objects held in museums, libraries and archives. It was fascinating seeing how eager they were and how quickly they mastered the equipment from recording to editing. The content that they produced was extremely powerful.

Here Hanna compares a WWII dog tag to her school exam number:

Kadeem’s poem A Taste of Feeling describes the decline in the use of a typewriter:

The finished podcasts will be made available on the Museum of Croydon website, and will be integrated into the museum’s collection in the coming months. The museum’s interactive content already stands out, but it has been great to work with them on developing it even further.

“We were impressed with the way sounddelivery worked with and enabled the project’s young people to create high quality, engaging podcasts.”
Gemma Sturtridge, Assistant Collections Officer, Croydon Museum Service

sound

You can find further details about the up-coming courses via the MLA London website, or by downloading this pdf training programme:

http://www.mlalondon.org.uk/uploads/documents/WFD200910MLAL.pdf

The workshops are taking place on the following dates:

November 4^th Social Media Know How

November 19^th Digital Storytelling

Booking form for MLA London’s training courses. Terms and Conditions: Please note the terms and conditions for booking on an MLA London course have changed. Please read the booking form carefully before submitting it.

To book a place on these courses please complete the booking form and return to by email to bookings@mlalondon.org.uk or by post to: Bookings, MLA London, Fourth Floor, 53-56 Great Sutton Street, London, EC1V 0DG