The working life of Museum of London

Rob Campbell, Project Manager at the Museum in Docklands, managed to find a few moments to update us on progress in the final week of installation for the exhibition, Jack the Ripper and the East End which opens on Thursday, May 15 :

As we enter the last week of the exhibition everyone has been filled with manic energy and fear. Malfunctioning DVDs, players, incorrect graphics, broken emails, difficult lenders, oversized stuffed dogs and scratched cases have all taken their toll on the team.

However, we have managed to overcome all of this and in the week that Olympic torch made it to the top of mount Everest we too near the summit! Nearly all of the objects are now installed (including all of the original Ripper letters from the TNA), all the captions are running hot off the presses and our electricians are tweaking lights and fixing emergency signs.

Hope to see you all when it opens and you can see what all this hard work has produced!

You can see more photos from the installation on Flickr.

Hi, my name is Vicky Lee and I’m the Marketing Manager for Museum of London and Museum in Docklands. In essence it’s my job to raise awareness of both museums to get people to visit our amazing collections and attend our brilliant events.

I work across many projects here but for the last few months the new ‘Jack the Ripper and the East End’ exhibition at Museum in Docklands has been taking up most of time. I can safely say that I now know far more about Jack the Ripper than I ever wanted to… but in truth it’s a fascinating project and I’ve been having a lot of fun working on the marketing campaign, which properly kicks off next month.

Since the beginning of this year I’ve been working with an agency called Dotcog to develop an online viral campaign to tie in with our fantastic marketing visual (so far the origin of many excited noises from staff and soon to be seen on the front cover of BBC History magazine!), designed by Cog Design.

Back last year I was struggling to think of an idea for a viral that wasn’t tasteless (as opposed to some of the rather disturbing Jack the Ripper games I discovered while researching online) and yet still interesting enough for people to pass around to friends and ultimately to get them to visit the exhibition.

As with most successful virals the simplest ideas are usually the best and after talks of Victorian sleuth games and 3D maps of the labyrinth that was East London we plumped for ‘Ripper Ransoms’, which later became ‘Notorious Notes‘.

Anyway, at last the viral is live but you’ll have to check out ‘Notorious Notes‘ to see exactly how it works. What I can tell you is that the basic premise takes its inspiration from a note made up of cut-out newspaper letters sent to the Metropolitan Police in 1888 claiming responsibility for the murders (soon to be seen in the exhibition!), and that if you send it to three friends, you’ll get 20% off entry to the exhibition.

Please do have a play and let me know what you think!

Robert Campbell: Exhibition Project Manager
Job title: Exhibition Project Manager
Department: Museum in Docklands Directorate

What is your role as an Exhibition Project Manager?
I run exhibitions for the Museum in Docklands – this involves taking an idea for an exhibition and working with a large team of people to make it a reality.

I spend my time planning then monitoring the progress of the project and trying to make everyone work as a team.

It is very much about people management – getting people to deliver to a very tight schedule whilst not losing sight of the positive and fun outcome at the end – a new and enjoyable permanent gallery, website or temporary exhibition.

What were you doing before this?
I left university in 2003 and then worked as a ‘temp’ for a year with the Home Office. I went travelling round the world for 9 months. After that I worked as a ‘temp’ at the Independent Police Complaints Commission before working as PA to the Director of the Museum in Docklands from September 2005 – April 2007.

Why did you decide to be an Exhibition Project Manager at the Museum?
I always had a love of history and I didn’t want to stay at University and try for a PhD or masters. I thought that working in a museum would allow me to pursue my interest in the past alongside the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of working in the public sector – and I was right!

I started with the first job I could get – PA to the Director, and worked really hard until I was in a position to get the job I have now. I now work even harder…

Have you always wanted to do this and why?
I have not always wanted to work in a museum. I wanted to be a banker or a lawyer or work in the civil service. However, having worked at the Police Complaints Commission and the Home Office (and seen many of my University friends become unhappy Lawyers), I did not feel they were the right jobs for me.

Having worked in a museum now I never want to leave the sector!

What do you love about your job?
I love that I am busy all day every day with interesting, varied and challenging work that brings enjoyment and knowledge into people’s lives. I like the business of presenting the history of London to people. And I love the Museum building and the people who come with it.

What do you hate about your job?
I hate the inertia that sometimes paralyses good ideas due to a lack of funding or time.

What is the strangest or funniest thing that has ever happened to you in this job?
The strangest thing I have seen was on my first day when I was shown around the archives here at the Museum in Docklands. I imagined the shelves to be groaning under the weight of the minute books and records of long deceased dockers and dock companies. I was not disappointed, as this was what I found. However, I couldn’t help but notice that in amongst the boxes of documents there was one box labelled ‘Fossilised Cat with Fossilised Rat, FRAGILE’!

I did enquire as to when this artefact goes on permanent exhibition in the Museum.

What was your best day like?
My best day so far was being given the job of project managing a major temporary exhibition; Jack the Ripper and the East End Labyrinth. The exhibition is to open in May 2008 and it is very daunting to think about the number of different things I have to organize and accomplish before it can open.

However, I hope this day will be replaced as my best when the new London, Sugar and Slavery Gallery open at the Museum. This project, relating London’s role in Trans-Atlantic Slavery, its abolition and its legacy on the capital, is the only permanent gallery of its kind. The project means so much to so many people and will serve as a permanent marker to this forgotten aspect of British history.

Where are you going in the future?
I would eventually like to run a Museum! (Possibly in Hawaii).

[This post was originally published on the Museum of London group intranet]

This week we talk to Isilda Almeida, Community and Family Learning Officer at the Museum in Docklands.

Job title: Community and Family Learning Officer
Department: Museum in Docklands Access and Learning

What is your role as a Community and Family Learning Officer?
I am responsible for the creation and delivery of the Museum in Docklands’ community programme, the family learning programme, outreach, early years learning and schools community special events. I organise festivals such as Chinese New Year and coordinate the budget for the above programmes.

As part of my job I initiate and or support partnerships with external organisations and projects ensuring they are reflected onto the Public events programme.

What where you doing before this?
I came to the UK to take a Master of Arts in Museum Studies in 2001. I came to London to do my placement at the Museum of Childhood and I ended up staying after that. My first paid job in London was working at an Art Gallery in Hackney. Simultaneously I freelanced in some of the local museums.

Why did you decide to be a Community and Family Learning Officer at the Museum?
I have decided for a career in Museums when I was doing my first degree on Culture Studies in Lisbon. Since then I have worked for the Gulbenkian Foundation and for the Portuguese Ministry of Culture Museum’s Institute.

What do you love about your job?
This job gives an opportunity to be creative and innovative whilst dealing with interesting issues such as heritage and identity. There are always new initiatives and projects to contribute to. The two things I enjoy the most are the fact that I am continuously learning and the work with families; seeing how they, and mostly the children, interact with the Museum.

What do you hate about your job?
I dislike the barriers imposed by lack of funding and or time.

What is the strangest or funniest thing that has ever happened to you in this job?
One morning after teaching a Foundations stage session I felt my leg trapped in a little girl’s arms. She was very small and whilst holding on to my leg she looked up and said ‘Can I stay with you?’. The teacher had to come and pick her up because she didn’t want to leave.

In general there isn’t a single day in which I don’t have a laugh.

What was your best day like?
My best days each year are during Chinese New Year. It gets more exciting every year and I thrive on the Community leaders’ enthusiasm. It is extremely rewarding also because it is attended in large numbers.

Where are you going in the future?
I want to do a placement in a Museum in another part of the world, possibly the USA to broaden my experience of Museum practise.

Jon Cotton, Senior Curator (Prehistory) in the Early London History and Collections department of the Museum of London, talks about the Weather Permitting display at the Museum of London. You can see Weather Permitting at the Museum of London until Sunday 15 June 2008.

‘When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.’ Dr Samuel Johnson.

Why Weather Permitting at the Museum of London?
Try switching on your TV or radio or opening a newspaper without coming across the words ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. The Museum is well placed to cast an historical eye on this topical question, although in putting the display together we deliberately made no attempt to present a thorough-going scientific analysis of climate change (we’re not meteorologists after all – or politicians for that matter). Instead our aim was to offer a well-grounded historical commentary on London’s weather, delivered with a light touch that focussed on the quirky and the downright strange. The display took the best part of six months to research, design and mount, and its successful delivery involved a wide range of people right across the Museum and beyond.

Display or Exhibition?
We’ve been careful to describe the show as a display, NOT an exhibition. The reason is simple: the space available within the Museum is currently limited. We do not want to raise more expectations than we can realistically deliver in the space. That said, we hope that there is plenty in Weather Permitting with which our visitors can engage.

What’s in the display then?
The display is split between the front foyer and the area outside the London before London gallery. Both are equally important. The front foyer incorporates various layers of information including a climate time-line that runs right to left back into the Ice Age, to highlight the cyclical nature of climate change. This is populated with individual weather events that aim for the ‘well I never’ response.

Contemporary quotes and quirky facts are supported by appropriate images and objects including costume in the large case to the left. A series of five free-standing displays in front of the time-line wall examine specific types of weather: HEAT; STORM; FLOOD; FOG; FREEZE.

Finally a listening-post contains a series of oral testimonies relating to various weather-related events such as the Westminster flood of 1928, the freezing winter of 1947 and so on.

The second main part of the display is in the London before London foyer around the corner. This provides a more contemplative space to show light-sensitive objects including a series of paintings that focus on how artists have recorded London’s weather in the past.

What’s been the response?
So far, reaction has been really positive: the first two weeks of the display coincided with school half term and the foyer was absolutely heaving. Families were spotted singing along to the weather songs and nursery rhymes, and enjoying the storytelling sessions. There’s been a down-side though – the interactives have taken a terrible battering. We’ve already gone through several thunderdrums and a range of fans while the weather lore disk will have to be redesigned to cope with the numbers wanting to use it. It looks as though we’ve been victims of our own success!

The press have picked up on the display too. Time Out have been particularly supportive, and even arranged a tie-in competition asking readers to name their all-time favourite top ten weather songs. (The winner got to hear some of his selections playing in the foyer too!)

My favourite bit of the display …?
I’m really fond of the pair of dainty silk shoes dating to c.1700 in the costume display case, and the painting of the cab horses in snow in the London before London foyer. (I also enjoyed drinking the contents of the bottle of English wine that forms part of the display – but that’s another story!) The whole team had a great time putting the music sound track together, and an appeal to other colleagues swiftly brought a deluge of replies. Everyone’s got their favourite song – for what it’s worth mine is When The Levee Breaks, a 1971 cover version by Led Zeppelin of a song originally written by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy following the disasterous Mississippi floods of 1927. Given the floods we had in parts of London last summer, this has a very contemporary edge …

Well, fancy that …

• John Evelyn’s 1661 tract Fumifugium: or the Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoake of London Dissipated was one of the first to draw attention to environmental problems in the capital.
• An earthquake at five-thirty in the morning of March 8 1750 threw a servant girl in Charterhouse Square from her bed, causing her to break her arm. Dogs howled ‘in uncommon tones’ and fish were seen to jump ‘half a yard above the water’.
• While watching late night TV Ron Langton was startled to find fish falling on the roof of his house in East Ham during a thunderstorm on May 26 1984. Other residents in nearby Canning Town experienced similar fish showers the same evening.

There are more photos from the development of the display and the final installation on Flickr.

This week Sarah Demb, the Hub Records Project Manager talks about her role.

Name: Sarah Demb
Job title: Hub Records Project Manager
Department: Information Resources

What is your role as Hub Records Project Manager?

My remit is to survey records keeping practices and procedures across the Hub museums and to make recommendations for improvements. This means I get to interview people about what they do and how they do it – lots of meetings! It’s a fantastic opportunity for me to meet many people in the community and for them to let me know what they would like to see in the way of records management practices to make their work easier.

What were you doing before this?
I spent three years as Project Manager at the International Records Management Trust where I worked both in the field in Africa and in our office in London managing and consulting on projects to improve government records keeping. I worked with National Archivists, other senior government officials and records creators and users in ministries to increase transparency, accountability and good governance through improved records keeping.

I got to assist local teams in raising awareness of records management as a tool to prevent corruption and ensure citizen rights to things like pensions and the basic tenets of justice. I worked in courts in Kenya and Botswana and a variety of ministries in Sierra Leone as well managing other projects in Nigeria, DR Congo and The Gambia, to name just a few places.

Why did you decide to become Hub Records Project Manager at the Museum?
As my contract at my last job was ending, I knew I wanted to stay in London and work at a museum. This job was a prefect mix of the work I had just finished in a museum environment.

Have you always wanted to do this and why?
I grew up in Canada, spent over 9 years working in the United States and then moved to London, where I had wanted to live ever since reading too much Brit kidlit! I came to the UK on an employer-sponsored work permit in 2003 and if you had told me then that I would end up working at the Museum of London, I would have had a hard time believing you! But I first knew I wanted to work in museums after my graduate internship at the JFK Library in Boston, where I got to work with the Ernest Hemingway Archives as well as Kennedy administration records.

I still felt the same way after graduate school and was lucky enough to be hired by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Boston as the first professional full-time archivist in its 130+ years’ history.

After five years there, I moved on to the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution where I worked directly with many of the Native American communities; it was a very different way of looking at records keeping and intellectual property than at the Peabody. Having worked at a museum whose primary focus is scholarly and then at one which is a huge national institution, it seems fitting to now come to the Museum of London and to work across the Hub museums. Museum of London has been one of my favourite museums for a long time; I used to visit the UK before I moved here and always checked out the Museum.

What do you love about your job?
I’m passionate about museum records! The relationship between objects and documentation is so important; without provenance collections have little or no value, so all museum records, including the material that documents administrative processes like HR or Finance, contribute to the knowledge, history and care of the objects.

The best thing is to help locate records that people think have been thrown away or gone missing. More often than not, they turn up and it’s just a question of designing a system to keep them that will be useful to as many people as possible over the most appropriate time period. I’m delighted to say that the project has been extended through March 2009, so we’ll be bringing on procedures which will help everyone do just that – ensure their records fit into a useful framework.

What do you hate about your job?
Maybe the amount of keyboarding inevitably involved. The interviews make up for that.

What is the strangest or funniest thing that has ever happened to you in this job?
I don’t have any stories about Museum of London or the Hub museums yet, as it is early days. However, anything is possible in museums and records work. In the past as part of my work, I’ve met with Native Americans as representatives of their sovereign nations, attempted to return stolen records back to foreign countries, brought to light 18th century autograph collections, chased squirrels out of reading rooms and taken the airport helicopter in to Freetown, Sierra Leone. I don’t know why people think that archives and records are dusty or dull!

Update 15 April 2010:  Please note, Sarah’s role at the Museum has changed and this post is left here for historical purpose only.

Emma Ramsey recently volunteered for work experience at the Museum of London, and this is her account of her week:

“When I first decided to undertake work experience at the Museum of London, I was simply hoping to learn more about the Roman invasion of Britain and other periods of early history. So I was pleasantly surprised to come away, not only with more historical knowledge, but also with a good idea of what goes on in a museum behind the exhibitions and displays.

On Monday I began by sorting the entries for the London’s Burning exhibition poem activity, and typing up the audio recording of the Great Fire of London study day (held on 6 October 2007). I never really knew a great deal about the Great Fire before, but having listened to the recording of the study day for a good part of the week I feel as though I would have a good chance at Mastermind with ‘London in 1666′ as my chosen subject! Or at least, I was able to reply to an email sent in by someone asking what caused the fire at the end of the week.

On Tuesday afternoon I visited the Guildhall amphitheatre on a guided tour with the Roman curator Jenny Hall. This, coupled with my time spent in the Conservation lab on Thursday and Friday, taught me a lot about the methods of preservation used for wood and leather.

I also had the opportunity to see the Transit room on Thursday, where I got a sneak preview of some of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ items to go on display at the Museum in Docklands in May. [A note for readers: the Transit Store is a temporary storage room for objects either about to be installed in an exhibition/gallery or that have just been taken off display and are about to be sent back to their permanent stores.]

During the week I was also able to visit the costume department and sit in on a meeting about the events planned for National Archaeology Week. I also had the task of putting visitor comments from the Outside Edge exhibition at the Museum in Docklands into an Excel document in order to record its success. I always had plenty to do and it feels as though the week flew by. I would thoroughly recommend this work experience to anyone who is interested in history and how it is preserved as it really gave me a great insight into museum work and taught me skills that I would not learn at school. It was a thoroughly enriching experience, and I am grateful to the Museum for giving me the opportunity.”

The Museum of London received the Bronze Award at the 2007 Visit London Awards in the category for its exhibition Belonging: voices of London’s refugees.

Belonging (October 2006 – February 2007) was a collaborative production that formed part of the Refugee Communities History Project, led by the Evelyn Oldfield Unit in partnership with Museum of London, London Metropolitan University and eighteen refugee community organisations.

It also featured work created as part of the London Museums Hub Refugee Heritage Programme. For more information about Belonging, visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk/belonging.

The Gold Award went to the London International Festival of Theatre for Eat London, a major event in Trafalgar Square in which community groups created a model of central London in food. The Silver Award went to the Southbank Centre for The Overture, the grand reopening of the Royal Festival Hall.

Plans for 2008

Both Museum of London and Museum in Docklands have great plans for 2008. Here’s a sneak preview of what’s coming up this year…

Don’t forget late at both Museum of London and Museum in Docklands on the first Thursday of every month. When twilight descends unexpected events occur…giving people the chance to enjoy live performances, tours and music alongside relaxing with a drink at the bar! Check our Events page for updates.

MUSEUM OF LONDON

Weather Permitting: London’s changing climate

15 February – 20 April 2008

The state of the weather is in the forefront of the mind of the public, as Dr Johnson informs us, ‘when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.’ Museum of London launches its first display focusing on centuries of the capital’s climate change and weather reports.

The Big Smoke

1 July – 21 September 2008

One year on from the smoking ban, a display looking at the history of smoking in London. Using objects and images from the Museum of London’s collections the display will chart the history of smoking from the first introduction of tobacco to London, to the present day, following changes in attitude over the centuries. The display will also showcase different opinions on the current smoking ban and show its effects on London businesses and Londoners.

Caught in time – photo display to coincide with publication of book

2 October – 23 November 2008

A photographic display documenting a diverse range of old-style shops in London, taken during the 1970s and 1980s , and more recent photographs showing what happened to the shop sites after they closed. The high-quality, large scale photographs will be accompanied by recordings of interviews with the former shop owners and proprietors.

The hugely exciting £20.5 million redevelopment project to transform the lower galleries is underway and the noisy work about to commence. The upper galleries, London Before London, Roman London and Medieval London remain open throughout the refurbishment and a full programme of fantastic adult and family events continue.

MUSEUM IN DOCKLANDS

Outside Edge: A journey through Black British lesbian and gay history

7 February – 4 April 2008

This challenging display will publicly commemorate people and events important to the Black LGBT community. It will celebrate its achievements and highlight the issues it has faced in the past and still faces today. The display will document the emergence of the Black LGBT community from the 1970s and demonstrate its contribution to campaigns for fair representation and against homophobia, while also celebrating the vibrant Black LGBT cultural, club and music scene.

Jack the Ripper and the East End

15 May – 2 November 2008

Museum in Docklands is returning to the scene of London’s most infamous crimes, with its major new exhibition, Jack the Ripper and the East End. The exhibition will open a new path by looking at the human stories behind the penny-dreadful accounts. Bringing together the surviving original documents for the first time, including police files, photographs, and letters from the public, it will map the world which witnessed the murders and was transformed by them.

Museum in Docklands turns 5 this year and will be celebrating in the summer!

My Job at the Museum of London, by Mike Seaborne, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London

I am part of the team that looks after the Museum’s collections relating to the history of London from the beginning of the 18th century to the present day. I have special responsibility for the collections of historic photographs, which altogether amount to the best part of half a million items! The oldest photograph in the collection dates from 1845 and is a view of the old Hungerford Bridge taken by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the negative-positive process of photography. Our newest photograph was taken last week!

My job involves recommending new photographic acquisitions, researching and cataloguing the collection, answering enquiries and undertaking special projects, such as exhibitions. At present, I and the rest of the team are busily engaged in creating a whole new gallery for the Museum, called Capital City, which will offer a completely new look at London’s history over the past 300 years. I am particularly involved in developing a large database of photographs from the collection which will be available for public access both in the new gallery and on the Museum’s website. Our target is to have at least 2,000 photographs in the database by the time the gallery opens in late 2009/early 2010.

I am a photographer as well as a curator and another important part of my job is to go out and photograph present-day London both for the collection and for exhibition or publication projects. I am particularly interested in London’s urban landscape and how it reflects social and economic change. Recent projects I’ve worked on have included social housing, shopping centres and the area of the Lower Lea Valley which is being redeveloped for the London Olympic Games in 2012.

How did I get my job? I suppose I was simply in the right place at the right time. Before I joined the Museum in 1979 I had spent a year working at the Fox Talbot Museum of Early Photography and a another year as an industrial archaeologist using photography to document sites of industrial-historical interest. Here at the Museum I am fortunate in being able to combine my interest in history with my own work as a photographer.

My page on the Exploring 20th Century London site is at http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/server.php?show=conInformationRecord.149. I also have work on the Urban Landscape site.