Oxcavation - October 2016

After producing events aimed at adults and young adults, we decided to broaden our horizons and create an event for families. We had all engaged with families in some way as part of our volunteering, whether in Explore Oxford, or at one of the Museum’s family days, but we had never designed and delivered something on this scale. Challenge accepted!

The next Museum’s at Night event would fall close to Halloween, and we discussed the possibility of creating something spooky for families. We discussed creating a trail with spooky stories of the city and its history, but were very aware of the need to create something age-appropriate – we didn’t want to frighten children too much! After getting our thinking caps on, we decided that we particularly liked the idea of a trail, and wanted to use an unusual object to tell a wider history of the city. Oxford Archaeology had recently displayed objects found as part of the Westgate dig, and we partnered with them to borrow an object from the dig. What better way to tell the history of Oxford than with an Ox skeleton?

Inspired by the history of the West of the city, and Oxford Archaeology, we set to work on designing a series of activities for our young archaeologist guests , including colouring an image of Oxford’s crest, creating an alchemy-style galaxy bottle and a tissue-paper stained-glass window (–both inspired by the West of the city), object handling and a sand-pit with a digging and cataloguing activity. Each activity was accompanied by a question, and all of the answers combined presented a special clue.

With the special clue in hand, families would be directed to the ‘mad professor’ and the Ox skeleton. The clue would help the professor discover whether the mystery object in his study was a horse skeleton or an ox skeleton, and the wider significance of the object in the city’s history.

After creating our information sheets, testing the craft activities, promoting the event, and decorating the space, we were set to go! As families came in, we donned hi-vis jackets to become archaeologists, helping the young archaeologists and their families to do the activities and complete the trail. We had no idea how many families would arrive over the course of the evening, and whether they would be intrigued by our trail. There were lots of excited little faces during the night – including our own!

Thanks must go to Oxford Archaeology for lending us the Ox skeleton and lots of equipment, and David, Euton and the Museum for helping us to design and deliver our most complicated event yet! 

New Perspectives: Thiepval Memorial Museum, France

The Museum of Oxford Young Innovators are a multi-national and well-travelled group, so we will occasionally be posting about our visits to other museums we love both within and beyond the UK! Today’s post is by Hanna.

I was fortunate to be in France recently as part of a group of 25 PhD students from 11 countries who all study the First World War. We were brought to the Verdun and Somme areas for a week by l’Historial de la Grande Guerre, a FWW research centre in Péronne. A highlight of the week was attending the ceremony at the Thiepval Memorial for the 100 th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The Thiepval Memorial is the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, and lists more than 72,000 names of British and South African soldiers who fought in this region and whose bodies were never found. It is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) monument, and is their largest monument in the world. The line between ‘memorial’ and ‘museum’ is a fascinatingly blurry one, and many war museums consider themselves to be memorials. Additionally, many

monumental memorials, including Thiepval, are accompanied by interpretive centres/museums so that visitors can fully grasp their significance. Thiepval's visitor centre underwent an enormous upgrade, with the addition of a museum wing, time to coincide with the 100th anniversary on July 1st. Here are some of my favourite features:


The centrepiece is a massive hall (with mirrors at the ends, creating false impressions of an infinitely extending space) with line drawings depicting the battle in a continuous narrative chronological sequence, in the tradition of the Bayeux tapestry or the lion hunt reliefs from the palace of Ashurbanipal in the British Museum. Rather than have traditional interpretive panels, accompanying the walls of drawings are primary source quotations from a refreshingly diverse array of perspectives; alternating nationalities and levels of seniority. The entire museum is also multilingual, with consistently two and sometimes up to four languages.

Running through the centre of the room are glassed-over floor cases interspersed with digital screens offering facts and figures about the battle. The layout of the space- particularly the location/height of interpretive text- is very accessible for wheelchair users and children. The use of embedded floor cases creates an almost archaeological effect, and is also a subtle yet effective reminder of the lethal danger that buried unexploded shells from the First World War are still posing to French farmers today.

I have a Masters degree in Museum Studies which involved spending a lot of time learning about different interpretive techniques and design elements, so I always love finding new ones that I haven’t seen before! One room of the museum was entirely dedicated to remembrance of individuals, with the walls covered in photos of soldiers who went missing on the Somme. On the floor are projected biographical details about specific soldiers, on a rotating basis. The information is projected in four languages, and visitors are given blank white pieces of board to hold up in front of them and 'intercept' the projection of the language they want to read. 

The Thiepval Visitor Centre welcomes 150,000 visitors in an ‘average’ year, and these First World War centenary years are producing public interest and visits well beyond average. The addition of the new museum will no doubt continue to keep Thiepval a relevant and meaningful place for visitors from the UK and beyond. 

Hanna

Spotlight: Real Tennis Balls

Some of the smaller and humbler objects in Explore Oxford, the Museum of Oxford’s current exhibition space in Oxford Town Hall, can easily be overlooked by the passer-by. However, we shouldn’t let their unassuming exterior blind us to the history which can be uncovered by digging a little deeper.

Let’s take our Real Tennis balls as an example. These balls were found on the roof of Wadham College and are about 400 years old. Unlike modern tennis balls, which have a hollow rubber core filled with pressurized air and covered in wool or nylon, these OAP balls have a centre of cork with fabric wrapped around them. Real Tennis balls are much less bouncy than normal tennis balls – though ours have probably lost their bounce altogether!

Real tennis is the game from which our modern day tennis is derived. Originally, players would throw a roughly-made ball against walls, floors, and roofs outside whilst wearing thick leather gloves to protect their hands. Eventually these gloves evolved into rudimentary rackets and the game moved inside. Played on an indoor court, Real Tennis incorporates sloping surfaces, galleries, and other unusual features of a room into the game.

In England, the sport used to be called Royal Tennis and was enjoyed by the aristocracy as well as ecclesiastical high-ups across Europe. Apparently a version of the game was played by the Greeks and Romans! Today there are few courts scattered across the globe, one of which can be found in Oxford’s Merton College and is still used by students today.

Wadham College, where our Real Tennis balls were found was founded in 1610. It is now one of the largest colleges in Oxford with about 425 undergraduates. We think our tennis balls are around 400 years old meaning they could date from the very first years of the college itself.

It’s wonderful to have such an ancient but homely reminder of the leisure hours of the millions of students who have passed through the city over the last thousand years. Next time you’re in Explore Oxford keep an eye out for these very special tennis balls!

Spotlight: Dances of Death

Explore Oxford has a couple of gruesome objects in its collection - such as a copy of Oliver Cromwell’s death mask. One other such object is the three panels showing part of the Dances of Death cycle. Originally these panels would have been part of a cycle of 40 images.

Our panels were rescued from 46, Broad Street, Oxford, the old home of the antiquarian William Fletcher (c.1738-1826) before its demolition in 1937. They depict Death dancing with a Canon, a Lawyer and a Physician and alongside the other panels would have decorated the walls of Alderman Fletcher’s property.

The Dances of Death - also known as the Danse Macabre - encompasses an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death. No matter your station in life the Dances of Death illustrated the equalising and inevitable power of death. This concept was expressed in poetry, music, and visual arts across western Europe in the Late Medieval Ages. Officially the Dances of Death are a representation of a dance between both living and dead figures, the living arranged in order of their rank – from the Pope and Emperors all the way down to the child and common Peddler. The Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests that this rather macabre artistic type gained popularity in the Middle Ages as a result of the Black Death followed by the Hundred Years’ War. 

Our panels date from slightly later; based on a 16^th century cycle they were created in the 18^th century. Did you know that our near neighbour the Ashmolean Museum are lucky enough to have another panel in this series? This image shows Death dancing with a pagan woman; a panel which would come relatively late in the cycle due to the low status of the living figure.

Do pop into Explore Oxford to give these pieces of history a gander!

To see a-forne the sodeyne

Violence Of cruel dethe

that ben so wyse and sage

Whiche sleeth allas

by stroke of pestilence

Bothe yonge and olde

of low and hie parage.

From John Lydgate’s The Dance of Death

Played in Oxford, Museums at Night May 2016

Played in Oxford 

On the night of 13 the of May guests at the Museum of Oxford enjoyed listening, and even dancing along, to some of the best local musicians performing in Oxford today. Played in Oxford, part of the nation-wide Museums at Night phenomenon, was the young volunteers group’s latest highly successful event.

Beginning a couple of months earlier by reflecting on the sad passing of the musical legend David Bowie, we wanted to celebrate the musical history of our own city. How apt that such an event should take place in the Town Hall where Bowie himself once performed. Our first decision was to showcase a range of local musicians of all genres and ages. 

After releasing a general call-out we whittled down the exciting responses to create a wonderfully varied line-up for the evening. Played in Oxford featured performances from Jack Little, Three Empty Domes, Papa Nui, Phousa, and Art Theefe. Jack Little and Phousa both presented chilled acoustic sets, Three Empty Domes’ alternative music stepped up the pace a little and Pape Nui and Art Theefe had our guests up and dancing to wrap the evening up. Along with a boogie we also offered our guests a bar, the evening was staffed by the team with faces bearing the Bowie lighting.

Of course it wasn’t all play! A major part of the promotional material for this event was centred around the team’s research into Oxford’s musical history. From this material we drew fun and interesting facts to create fantastic promotional videos, filmed around Oxford, which can now be seen on the Museum of Oxford’s YouTube channel.

The event attracted a variety of visitors from teens, to adults, to those still young at heart. Money raised by the event will be fed into the young volunteer’s next projects including the next Museums at Night event in October. Therefore, the team would like to thank all the performers and the brilliant guests who made the night so much fun!

We are eager to make the event a regular feature so keep your eyes peeled for the next #PlayedinOxford

Olivia Kippax-Jones

Damifino, Museums at Night November 2015

Damifino, a threatening enough sounding title for a Halloween event, but what does it actually mean? According to mentalfloss.com, surely an authority on Victorian slang, the creative cuss is a contraction of “damned if I know.” This sentiment was certainly one our group of young people were feeling mid-summer 2015 when asked to name their upcoming event. And thus Damifino was born.

Bringing together a group of disparate people whose only common traits were that their ages fell between 16 and 25 and that they loved museums could have been a disaster waiting to happen. However, the variety of experiences and ideas brought together in this way made for a very creative and imaginative planning process. We began to talk about the Halloween event in early in the summer, holding meetings sporadically in which we discussed themes, activities, budget, publicity, and how best to involve the Museum’s collection in the evening. Once we hit September our meetings became more regular and we discussed practicalities such as lighting, how to build a tent in the event space and how on earth to make a photoboth! Having to be occasionally reeled back from the impossible by Museum staff, we came up with a plan. 

Our event was to be a relaxed drop-in evening, vaguely Victorian-themed with tours led by a wonderful character dreamt up by the more creative in the group – the Collector. The Collector, a Victorian man fascinated with amassing gory and gruesome historical objects, would allow the guests to learn more about objects in Explore Oxford than they might otherwise have known. The character featured in all our publicity for the event and was played on the night by an actor from Hidden Track theatre. The figure was partly inspired by the likes of Alderman William Fletcher who had the Museum’s Dance of Death panels decorating his halls.

The night itself went off with a bang. Well actually, it went off to the sound of bagpipes playing outside the Town Hall. However, apart from the unplanned concert our guests enjoyed, they could also get their tarot cards read, take silly Victorianesque pictures in our photobooth, and of course experience a tour of Explore Oxford which highlighted the more creepy nature of some of the objects. The collector guided guests around the Museum pointing out Oliver Cromwell’s death mask, the tomb of Frideswide, the knucklebone pavement and more. 

What else did we offer? Classic Victorian Halloween games such as apple bobbing and doughnuts on a string, drinks and delicious homemade food, the opportunity to share scary moments and deepest fears, and some great performances by a couple more actors from Hidden Track theatre. The evening was very successful in terms of attendance and also experience. We have had some really positive feedback, especially concerning the tours. This reaffirms what we already know, the Museum of Oxford has a lot to offer its visitors and events such as Museums at Night are a fantastic way of helping people engage with the history of Oxford.

Planning and running this event has been a great experience for me personally and I am sure I can speak for the rest of the team in thanking the Museum of Oxford for allowing us to have a go!

What will we do next? Damifino!

Olivia Kippax-Jones

Launching our new blog!

Over the next few weeks we will be launching our blog...watch this space!