Museum of London

The sounddelivery team will be channelling their inner Russell Crowe at the end of July as we prepare to enter the arena for the Museum of London’s Gladiator Games.

We’ve been commissioned to support the Museum’s youth volunteers to make a short video and reportage project for the event which is taking place at London’s Guildhall Yard.  Live Gladiators will be fighting to the death in front of the baying crowd (we’re assured no one will actually be hurt, and the “trained killers” are actually re-enactors!)

In the days running up to the Gladiator Games we will be teaching the young people the skills needed to capture the atmosphere and excitement of the event, as well as how to document the day through social media.  They’ll be creating storyboards, planning the production and allocating teams and resources across the Guildhall site.  On the day we’ll be guiding them to capture multimedia content using Flip cameras, Edirol audio kits and a bigger broadcast quality camera crew.

We had a recent meeting at the Museum with the wannabe Romans, who are part of the Britannia re-enactment society, who explained their commitment to historical fact and what inspires them to fight.  They also invited two of the Junction Panel members to enrol as corpse-bearers for the day to carry the defeated gladiators away.  They’ll be perfect embedded reporters!  You can find out how preparations are going for the Games at the Museum of London’s blog.

The Junction Youth Panel – made up of 16-21 year olds – has been meeting regularly and running events for the past year.  Part of the Museum of London’s contribution to Stories of the World: London (part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad project they have been exploring how London became the world city it is today by looking at the legacy of the Romans. All the work they have contributed to will feature in a display at the Museum of London next year.

The National Portrait Gallery commissioned us to produce a series of audio features to promote its monthly Visualising Portraits picture descriptions sessions for blind and partially-sighted visitors.

The lectures are lively and interactive, provoking much discussion and conversation. Each session takes place in the gallery, seated in front of the painting whilst experienced artists and describers give a detailed verbal description of a particular work from the collection. Each month focuses on a different portrait, from the famous to the infamous!

Outcome

The audio features we produced covered a whole range of portraits and styles, from contemporary artists like Eduardo Paolozzi to legends of Romanticism like John Keats.

Listen to our work

Joseph Severn, who had nursed his friend in Rome, described the circumstances recreated in this posthumous portrait:

‘This was the time he first fell ill and had written the Ode to the Nightingale on the morning of my visit to Hampstead. I found him sitting with the two chairs as I have painted him & was struck with the first real symptoms of sadness in Keats so finely expressed in that poem.’

Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi was a Scottish sculptor and artist. He was a major figure in the international art sphere working on his own interpretation and vision of the world. Paolozzi investigated how we can fit into the modern world to resemble our fragmented civilization through imagination and fantasy. One of his most well known sculptures is of Sir Isaac Newton which oversees the comings and goings in the courtyard at the British Library.

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:

Crich Tramway Village in Derbyshire had been given funding from the Renaissance East Midlands Mubu project to create an audio trail with a group of young people. They asked us to help them plan and produce the trail, working alongside creative writer Linda Kempton.

Approach

We worked with the Crich Tramway Village team to develop a plan to create the audio trail during the October half-term week. On the Friday before the half-term we met the group of 16-18 year olds and toured the museum to select the objects that would feature in the audio trail. Education manager Jan Barrett and curator Glynn Wilton provided historical information on each object and helped to transport the group back in time to understand the roles that the objects played in everyday life.

On the Monday of half-term Linda facilitated scriptwriting workshops, developing scenarios, stories and characters. We continued this work on the Tuesday, before starting to record the stories and short audio-dramas on the Wednesday. The teenagers acted in various roles, drafted in volunteers to help with the male voices, and collected and sourced music and sound effects.

We then trained the young people in audio editing, using Audacity.

Outcome

With their new editing skills the young people were able to create the audio tour, editing out their mistakes and adding tram sound effects as needed. We recommended that the museum host the audio on Soundcloud.com, to enable easy hosting and sharing.

Listen to our work

You can listen to the audio trail and download the tracks from the Crich Tramway Village website.

Or listen to Emily and Glynn as they act out a short drama about the A+B push button telephone:

A&B Phone Box by Crich Tramway Village

See also

Check out some of the pictures from the week:

Working from a detailed brief we put together a plan to create the Audio Trail working over the October half term week.  We first met the group of 16-18 year olds on the Friday before the half term and toured the museum selecting the objects that would form the audio trail.  Education manager, Jan Barrett, and curator, Glynn Wilton, provided historical information on each object and helped transport the group back in time to understand the roles the objects played in everyday life.

On the Monday of half term Linda facilitated scriptwriting workshops, developing scenarios, stories and characters.  We continued this work on the Tuesday and then started recording the stories and short audio-dramas on the Wednesday.  The teenagers acted in various roles and drafted in volunteers to help with the male voices, and collected and sourced music and sound effects.   We then trained the young people in audio editing, using Audacity, and they created the audio tour, editing out their mistakes, and mis-takes, and adding tram sound effects as needed.

We then suggested the Museum hosted the audio on Soundcloud.com, to enable easy hosting and sharing. You can listen to the Audio Trail and download the tracks from the Crich Tramway Museum website here.  They have also created a handy map so you can find each object around the museum.

Alternatively you can listen to Emily and Glynn below as they act out a short drama about the A+B push button telephone:

A&B Phone Box by Crich Tramway Village

And check out some of the pictures from the week: