The working life of Museum of London

A History Of LAARC’s Object Of The Month Competition

For the past four years, the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre (LAARC) has run an object of the month competition. Since its conception and humble beginnings, it has developed and evolved into a popular monthly event, enjoyed by LAARC visitors, volunteers and Museum staff alike.

Back in late 2005, the idea of an object of the month was not a new one. If you visited the websites of several museums across the country, you could find a monthly updated page dedicated to an object within their collections. The Museum of London however, wasn’t one of these and with over 6 million archaeological artefacts to choose from, it seemed a pity not to highlight our goodies.

LAARC volunteers regular get to rediscover incredible objects when working on site archives and it was a common for us to joke that certain objects were so good that they were definitely the best object of the day, if not the week, if not the year. So around Nov 2005 I thought we should do something about it. As luck would have it, the next month we inherited a suitable display case and come January 2005, our first outstanding object that caught our eye.

The first object was a Samian bowl from Borough High Street, which had been repaired in antiquity with lead rivets. (It later proved so good the V&A borrowed it for one of their exhibitions) And so the LAARC joined the many other museums and had an object of the month!

However, being the innovators that we strive to be, I wanted our Object of the Month to go beyond us simply picking an artefact and with the number of cool stuff volunteers were coming across each week, I thought about making it a competition, with several objects competing against each other to win votes; the one with the most became that month’s object.

And so it continued through January to December for the whole of 2006, yet the focus was still pretty much a competition directed at our volunteers and visitors to the archive. In 2007, we took it to the next step and hosted the competition on the LAARC website. This then progressed in April 2008 to the museum’s archaeology blog page, which gave voters the option to leave comments.

In 2009, the competition was due to continue on the blog site with the format the same as it always had been; three objects chosen by volunteers from the material they had recently been working on. However, around the start of the year, the blog’s server went down and forced to find an alternative host, I also thought it time to refresh the format.

For the past year, each month there has been one object selected by a LAARC volunteer, one by a LAARC member of staff and the final by a Museum of London curator. Unlike before, the objects were no longer necessarily from recently worked on archives, but could also include people’s favourite objects. Yet, the basic concept remained: Three objects, one vote, one winner selected by the public.

As the months passed the audience grew and each month saw more votes, a few comments about the objects from voters and even people requesting to nominate objects. Halfway through the year, special competitions were held, including former staff nominating, a special retirement competition and a “lucky loser” second chance month. Almost 1000 votes were received this year in total.

The final monthly competition took place in November, when for the first time seven objects were nominated, these by seven members of staff from seven different museum departments. As with previous years, all the monthly winners go through to December’s Object of the Year, which you can vote for by clicking here.

Having reached its peak, the LAARC competition now retires on a high, with its legacy continuing on these blog pages as the Museum of London now has its own Object of the Month, with contributions from all over our museum staff and volunteers. Thoughout 2010 you can discover a whole range of spectacular objects held within the museum’s collections.

Thanks for voting in the past and enjoy the objects in the future!

There’s so much going on all the time at LAARC, that we thought it was about time we wrote a little update.

LAARC has 4 main remits; Curatorial, Research, Education and Leadership.

Curatorial

This year so far has seen two LAARC Volunteer Inclusion Projects (LAARC VIP) take place within the archive. These aim to involve a wide range of people from London’s communities and offer them transferable skills and archaeological archiving experience. In return the archive gets a team helping to improve the storage and accessibility of our collections. Including the first of these VIP projects, which took place Sept-Dec 2008, over 70 volunteers have joined us and together we have processed all the material from sites excavated in 1972 and 1973 – this translates to over 1000 boxes of stuff and well over a mixture of 50,000 individual sherds, fragments and complete objects. For more info visit www.laarcvip3.wetpaint.com

In addition to our VIP projects, 15 long term volunteers join us one day a week, working on improving large site archives, including that of the Royal Mint (MIN86), Whitehall Palace (WPA61), Old Billingsgate Lorry Park (BIG82) and Southwark Street (15SKS80)

Without our team of volunteers, the archive would never have achieved as much as it has. From Jan – Jun 2009, our team have already contributed 563 days of volunteering. Impressive.

Research

During the first 6 months of the year, we have had almost 400 academic enquiries. Researchers have ranged from primary school children to internationally reknowned professors, looking at records and finds from Amphora makers stamps to Kosher lead seals to photos of archaeologists to erotic shaped artefacts!

Education

Athough without a specific education officer on our staff, we have still managed to engage with a vast amount of people, including 566 children  and 1208 adults via open day events, school outreach and other external events. In addition 605 people have visited the LAARC so far in 2009, learning about our collections, processes and purpose.

Leadership

Still reknowned as Leaders in our field of archaeological archiving, visitors from Canada, Pakistan, Scotland, Russia, Mozambique, Ghanaians Turkey have all come to gain an insight into what we do and be inspired by the systems we’ve put in place.

In addition we’ve appeared in magazine and newspaper articles and hosted the filming  of a couple of scenes for documentaries involving our collections.

We also have continued to promote website interaction and you can join in too by having a say in our object of the month competition:

www.objectofthemonth.wetpaint.com

Thanks to everyone who continues to support our work at the LAARC and let’s see what the next six months will bring.

Ok everyone, there’s only three more days left to vote for the LAARC Object of The Year. It’s dead easy to do:

Step 1: Click on this link to see and read about this year’s candidates:

http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/archaeology/2008/11/28/object-of-the-year-2008/

Step 2: Step one was so easy there is no step two!

So, there really is no excuse for you not to take a break from what you’re doing and have a bit of LAARC fun this yuletide. Jingle Bells.

Merry Christmas!

The LAARC Team

You can find out the winner of July’s Object of the Month Competition by following the link to the archaeology blog site:

http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/archaeology/2008/08/08/julys-winner/

July’s objects can be found on the archaeology blog pages – the winner will be revealed on Friday August 8th.

http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/archaeology/2008/08/01/object-of-the-month-july-08/

You can read more and vote for your favourite at Adam’s post on the archaeology blog, but as a sneak preview, June’s objects selected by LAARC volunteers are:

1. A Roman Flagon from Moorgate (MOG86)
2. A Tin-Glazed Plate from the Fleet Valley project (VAL88)
3. An antler figurine from Guildhall Yard (GYE92)

Each month, three artefacts are taken from the archaeological archive’s stores and put up for public vote. Your vote decide which goes on display in the Archive’s temporary exhibition case. The winning object for this month will be announced on Friday 6th June.

To celebrate the launch of MoLAS’ new book – London’s Delftware Industry, part written by LAARC’s very own Roy Stephenson, the three selected objects are all fine examples of this fine ceramic.

Go check out LAARC Object of the month – Delftware to view and vote for your favourite object.

Each month LAARC runs an Object Of The Month competition. Three artefacts are taken from the archive’s stores and put up for public vote to decide which goes on display in the Archive’s temporary exhibition case.

Competitions take place during the final week of each month. The winning object for this month will be announced on Friday 2nd May.

This month’s choices are all lead based alloys dating from the 16th & 17th Century.

1) From Abbot’s Lane (ABO92), a seed trough that would have hung on a bird cage

2) From Braidwood Street (BRA88), a decorated child’s finger whistle

3) From Abbots Lane (ABO92), a engraved spoon, with the maker’s mark, IG

1) 2) 3)

Click Here to vote for your favourite object.

You can also view and find out more information about the objects on Flickr at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laarc/sets/72157604281666414/

Finally to find out more about the sites they’re from visit our online catalogue:

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/laarc/catalogue/

Happy voting!

If you want to let us know exactly why you voted for an object, you can leave a comment below.