The working life of Museum of London

Time is ticking away before the 20 images that will make up the Your 2012 free photography exhibition go on display dealing with the impact of the construction of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Come along and see it when it starts at the Museum of London Docklands on the 22nd of July 2011.

It looks set to be a very exciting exhibition on a topic that is interesting for many people. Public and media interest is growing exponentially at the moment for the Olympics. Look at this post taken by the Viewtube during high Summer last year and compare it with the pictures taken earlier this month below at the same site.

Not only are large numbers of schools attending the site but also various senior citizens and tourist groups.

Even the media itself are regularly checking up on progress and reporting it nationwide.

If you would like to learn more about the Olympic site than I recommend that you come along to one of the our Olympic tours called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we will be offering on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 2.30pm -4pm and Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

Come again next week and we will look at the progress taking place at the Crossrail site that is right in front of the Olympic Stadium.

Peter

Time is ticking away before the 20 images that will make up the Your 2012 free exhibition go on display dealing with the impact of the construction of the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. Come along and see it when it starts at the Museum of London Docklands on 22nd  July 2011.

In the meantime to whet your appetite here is a picture of one of the canal boats that have been doing such a great job in clearing up the canals in preparation for the Olympics next year.

In case you are wondering just what they have to clear away check out the photo below.

If you would like to learn more about the Olympics site than I recommend that you come along to one of our Olympic tours  called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we will be doing on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 2.30pm -4pm and Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

Don’t forget to check this blog next week when I will be talking about the increasing media interest in the constructions sites in and around the Olympic Park.

Peter

Time is ticking away before the 20 images that will make up the Your 2012 free exhibition go on display dealing with the impact of the construction of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Come along and see it when it starts at the Museum of London Docklands in July.

In continuation of the recent History of the Olympic Site blogs here is part 3 of the story.

Bryant and May Factory

Is just a stone’s throw away from the Olympic Stadium and has left an indelible mark on British socioeconomic and trade union history.  The saga that made it famous began in 1888 when the company tried to force its workers to say they were happy with working conditions following some bad publicity. The workers refused so the company reacted by sacking them and a huge strike by 1,200 women ensued.

 The women won their strike. It is significant because the Bryant & May dispute was the first strike by unorganized workers to gain national publicity. Also because of its success it was instrumental in inspiring the formation of unions all over the country.

 Bazlegette Sewage System

During the Victoria Era the population of London rapidly expanded and with the advent of flush toilets to replace cess pits the net result was that increasing amounts of  sewage went untreated into the River Thames. The situation with the quality of the river became worse and worse until finally Parliament decided to do something in 1858 and appointed Joseph Bazalgette to sort out the problem.

He was a highly distinguished engineer who went on to develop London’s first comprehensive sewage system. This meant constructing eighty five miles of new sewers to re-route the sewage away from directly flowing into the Thames up river. As part of this construction work he built the Abbey Mills Pumping Station that later was nicknamed ‘The Cathedral of Sewage’.

 It took 16 years to build in total. It used to have high chimneys but these were knocked off during World War Two to prevent them being used as a navigational aid by German Bombers.

As you can see from the photo below it is currently being cleaned up for the Olympics and this means lots of scaffolding is required. 

 The Greenway footpath

The Greenway is a footpath and cycleway that passes right through the Olympic Park in East London and contains the Northern Outfall Sewer beneath it.

Yardleys building

Is famous throughout the world for its quality fragrances and soaps. If you look carefully on the photo you can see the iconic image of the flower sellers that has helped make this such a famous building.

If you would like to learn more about the site I recommend that you come along to one of the following Olympic tours  called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we will be doing on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 2.30pm -4pm and Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

And if you are interested in learning more about this recent series on the History of the Olympic Site are recommend you look here at the first part of the History of the Olympic Site 

Finally check here again next week and you can read about the mighty canal boats that are cleaning up the site ready for the Olympics.

Peter

Time is ticking away before the 20 images that will make up the Your 2012 free exhibition go on display dealing with the impact of the construction of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Come along and see it when it starts at the Museum of London Docklands in July.

As promised here is part two covering the history of the Olympic site

Stratford Railway Works

The Docks Area and Railway Yards were some of the largest in the country. In fact it was the hub of the suburban railway system and the principle locomotive running depot of the Great Eastern Railway, the largest in the country. This is why the area became prime targets for German Zeppelins in World War One and German Bombers in World War Two.

In 1965 West Ham & East Ham were combined to form the Borough of Newham. Governments began to recognise their neglect of the area and plans began to redevelop the area. Things started to change and a new freight Terminal opened on the derelict area of the vast railway engineering yards.

Stratford Railway Works started in 1840 whilst Stratford Works was built in 1847 from 15 acres over the years building and repairing locomotives,carriages and vans. The whole site covered an area of 132 ½ acres. Stratford Works built 1682 locomotives 5,500 passenger vehicles and 33,000 Good wagons.

By the post war period it had become a major Freight Terminal but it has recently been redeveloped into the Stratford International and Regional Station plus the brand new Westfield shopping centre. 

 Archaeology

During the development of the Olympic Aquatics Centre site, four prehistoric skeletons were found buried in graves around an area of Iron Age settlement. One of the skeletons is thought to be 3000 years old. In the Iron Age this would have been a small area of dry land on the edge of the river valley, surrounded by lakes, rivers and marshes. The first Londoners lived by and fished in what is now the River Lea (which surrounds the Olympic Stadium) and parts of their cooking pots have also been found.

Here are the latest pictures of the Aquatic Centre and as you can see it is almost complete and looks absolutely fantastic!

Don’t forget to read the final installment of this series on the History of the Olympic Site next week and if you would like to learn more about the site I recommend that you come along to one of the following Olympic tours  called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we do on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 2.30pm -4pm and Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

And if you are interested in the learning more about this series then come and check the first part of the History of the Olympic Site here.

Peter  

Time is ticking away before the 20 images that will make up the Your 2012 free exhibition go on display dealing with the impact of the construction of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Come along and see it when it starts at the Museum of London Docklands in July.

In the meantime to whet your appetite here are some photos of recent development work going on around the Olympic Park site. As you can see from the photo the Westfield development  is right in the middle of its construction process and on track to be ready for September 2011

    Also connecting the Hackney Marshes car park area with the Olympic Park is the new Ruckold Road bridge.

    With all this work going on we can’t blame some for having a well deserved break!

Come and check up on us again next week and we will have some more information and photos all about the history of the Olympic Park site prior to its recent regeneration.

Peter

I’ve been pretty quiet over the last few months on the blog front, but behind the scenes I’ve been working away at lots of different things.  The project I’m most excited about is our Pocket histories and Picturebank project and I can exclusively reveal for the first time (in public anyway) that the products of this are due to launch in March!

I blogged in August (can’t believe it was that long ago!) about the consultation that we did at the beginning of this project and a little bit about what we have planned, but now I’m back to tell you a bit more about how the project has taken shape.

I’m really proud of this project because it’s the biggest one that I’ve managed, and it’s involved a lot of people, a lot of hard work and a lot of planning and I’m really excited about launching the resources next month because, who cares about modesty, I think they’re great!!

A little bit about the pocket histories and picturebank

Our official description says this:

‘The pocket histories explore London’s history through objects from the Museum of London’s collections. Picturebank supports the pocket histories with images for educational use.’

Essentially, each pocket history topic takes 5 images (almost all of objects in the Museum’s collection) and uses them to tell the stories of London’s past.

In the Picturebank, users can search or browse by period or topic

These images (or most of them anyway) are then used in the picturebank where users (probably mainly in schools) can browse them by topic or by period, or just do a keyword search.  Once users have found an image, they can enlarge it, read a simple caption about it, use some prompt questions to start a discussion about it and find out whether or not it’s on display at the Museum.

The pocket histories cover loads of fascinating topics like

• What was life like in Tudor London?
• Why were London’s docks built?
• London Plagues 1348-1665
• What was life like for children in Victorian London?
• The ‘London Look’: London fashion trends 1950–2002
• Political Protest in London, 1750–1900

And we hope to add more in the coming years.

You’ll be able to read the pocket histories online, or download and print a PDF that’s all nice and designed and pretty if you’d prefer.

This is a sneak preview of what one of the nice, designed PDF versions look like

So who are they for?

The pocket histories are ideal for anyone who’s interested in London’s history and we’re hoping that they’ll gradually work become pages that people stumble on on Google even if they don’t necessarily know about the Museum of London.

As well as this general audience, we think they’ll be particularly useful for secondary school students doing research, primary school teachers preparing lessons or a visit to the Museum, or parents helping their children with homework or just helping them learn more about London’s history.

We designed the picturebank for a more specific schools and colleges audience because we think that it’ll work best on an interactive whiteboard or in an ICT suite.  The captions were written with children in mind and we’ve chosen the images that we’ve included very carefully to make sure that we can give teachers free rein to view, copy and print the images for use in their classroom or for private research (any other use, including sharing the resources would need to be negotiated with the Museum first).

About the project

One of the reasons I’ve most enjoyed this project is because I’ve worked with some really great people on it and I think this has been absolutely integral to why I’m so proud of the resources.  We have a core project team of two curators (Meriel Jeater and Beverley Cook), 4 audience-y type people (representing the schools team – Kirsty Sullivan, the inclusion team – Kirsty Marsh, the families team – Sandra Hedblad, and the adults team – Julie Carr), and a representative of the Information Resources Section (IRS) – Matthew Rose.  Having curators on board since the beginning of the project has really ensured that the topics we cover are grounded in our collection, our expertise, and the themes in our galleries.  Having representatives of all our target audiences on the team has been completely invalauble from the point of view of making sure that we create resources that are suitable for and interesting to all audiences.  And having the IRS perspective from Matthew who knows our collections management database inside out has been essential, particularly for the picturebank. We’ve also had a team of curators and writers outside the project team who we couldn’t have done without, and a host of other people across the museum who’ve been so helpful and so supportive.

We’ve had some brilliant discussions in our monthly project meetings where we took the time at the start to really think about why and how we would create the resources, and what we were trying to achieve. It’s meant that we thought  carefully about each one and it’s made them, I think, really strong, grounded, accessible and interesting resources (but that’s just me, you’ll have to let me know what you think when they go live!)

Nerdy goodness…

I alluded just now to our collections management database, and this leads me on to another really exciting (if maybe a little nerdy) part of the project.  I won’t go into the technical ins and outs, but a big advantage of our new picturebank is that it links to our collections management database. This means that if a curator takes an object off display, or maybe adds a bit more information to a record, or takes a photo of another aspect of it, once they update our collections management database, that information will be passed through to the picturebank – cool huh?

So I promise to try and blog again when the resources are up.  There’s no point me putting the links here yet because they’re not up yet, but I hope this gives you a bit of a sneak preview of what to expect, and hope you’ll be of the same opinion as me about them – I think they’re great!

When we asked this question “nominate the plant or flower you think best symbolises London and we’ll aim to include in our new Central Courtyard” on our social media pages we noticed immediately that the Buddleia was the most popular response.

And now, as the weather (we hope) turns milder, we are able to add a specially grown cutting to our Central Courtyard.

Planting our buddleia

Here you can see our Visitor Services Manager, Gerald, with Louise Nichols whose parents run a plant nursery and garden design business and who kindly donated the cutting to the Museum.

The reason the buddleia proved to be the most popular seems to be its hardiness and its ability to adapt to what London throws at it (a striking metaphor?) as is highlighted by this related tweet: “…found growing wild all over London in scrubland, cracks in walls, tops of buildings – attracts butterflies too”.

It was also one of the first plants to grow in bombsites during The Blitz and continues too hold a special significance for many Londoners.

Our buddleia will complement the existing planting in the courtyard and whilst “butterfly friendly” will also be popular with bees from our hive.

The planting location is important as this pot is easily seen from within the Museum.

The next step is to work with our Design Team and Curators to add a message to the pot that highlights the plants significance and that it was chosen by social media followers of the Museum.

Bringing a little of the outside into our galleries.

With thanks to Linda and Ralph Nichols and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

London Street Photography launched last night and I was there as one of the participating photographers. Its one thing looking at images and trying to understand their significance , but quite another to actually see the creators of these windows on society in the flesh. There was a definite electricity pulsing through the gallery last night and the thought that so many of the people in the room had actually contributed directly to what was on the wall, a fascinating and varied take on life in the city, was exciting. Photographers are often criticised for being an egotistical bunch, but many of the people I spoke to last night were modest about their achievements. I loved the contrast between Matt Stuarts often comic look at London and for example Sean McDonnells dramatic and slightly edgy work.

The exhibition was opened by Wolf Suschitzky, whose stirring tribute to the power and fascination of photography was a real call to arms for anyone with a camera. It rather harked back to my earlier words about nostalgia. Wolf made the point that times have changed and people’s perceptions of photography and its role in society are creating problems for dedicated exponents of the art of street photography. It must have been wonderful to have been able to wander the streets without people questioning ones intentions. Is that why the images of yesteryear are so captivating, because everyone looks so at ease with the camera?

One of the interesting things about photography is its ability to misrepresent its subject matter. In the early days of photography, the relative insensitivity of photographic emulsions to light meant that most photographs were taken in good weather. This perhaps creates the illusion that in the old days the weather was always nice. Wolf Suschitzky’s stunning image “A milkman- Charing Cross Road” shatters this illusion and is unusual in its depiction of the London of old . The wet road reflects light back and creates a frame around the milk cart. Wolf’s closing comment last night was to encourage everyone to continue taking photos, in good weather and bad. 

Today we added the last of Oscar Kirk, our 15 year old Messenger Boy from 1919, diary entries to our website, timed to be go “live” on the corresponding day his diary relates to this year.

The last of Oscar’s diary extracts is timed for 29 June, and over the last six months the team in Communications has got to know Oscar very well.

Oscar had a very sweet tooth and included in his diary lists of the treats he had bought that day not only for himself but for members of his family such as his sister Marjorie:

Saturday 22 February 1919 “It is my half day today and I went to Aldgate with Antram and bought a smoked sausage & ¼ of chocolate, a plateful of cockles, two buns, two bars of chocolate”

A veracious reader, Oscar provided an insight into the magazines and books of interest to youngsters at the time, indeed, at times you forgot that Oscar was still only 15 years old as he detailed his working day of early rises and mail deliveries around the docks of the East End, only for his diary to remind you as he writes how at lunchtime he would “stop for a play in the sack shed”.

Between January and June 1919 Oscar welcomed a new baby to the family, and introduced us to his friends and family from ‘Appa and Nana through to the brothers Antram.

As Oscar spent most of his working day outside, he kept meticulous note of the weather, and one of the highlights during this project was welcoming the BBC Weather Show to Museum of London Docklands to film a piece on the diary and indeed the links to all the content from that edition of the show from the Museum – all thanks to Oscar.

Extracts from Oscar’s diary have also been “tweeted” via Oscar’s twitter page @OscarKirk1919 and it is hoped that the success of this serialisation online can be repeated with other diaries from our collection.

The web pages dedicated to Oscar will remain as a resource under “Collections” on the Museum of London Docklands website www.museumoflondon.org.uk/oscarkirk

Fittingly, the last diary entry the Museum holds sees Oscar relate how the signing of the peace treaty that ended WWI was celebrated:

Sunday 29 June 1919 “Yesterday there were Maroons, Thunder Flashes and many other fireworks being let off after 3 o’clock and before 3 o’clock. Today a lot of people were drunk, as a result of the peace.”

Painting: Firework Display in Hyde Park. Oil on Canvas.Charles William Wyllie. The National Peace Celebrations were held in London on 19 July 1919 to mark the end of the First World War © Museum of London.

After writing so much about social media and the things we are currently doing, I am aware that I haven’t blogged in some time about what we’re doing right now and appear to have disappeared from the horizon. However, I assure you that I have been very busy and here’s an update of some of the things I am involved in:

Social media

I have taken a few actions following on from my last blog entry about what we’re doing on social media. The first action was to get support from my colleagues in Press & Marketing to help me manage the some of our social media activities, and over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that the numbers of tweets by us have increased. This is due to one of my colleagues, Tim, taking over much of the activities on this platform. Though I occasionally still go and respond to tweets and retweets, both directed at @museumoflondon as well as when ‘Museum of London’ is mentioned, Tim has been doing a wonderful (and much more interesting – thank you Tim!) job on it. Please continue to show your support and follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/museumoflondon

Tim has also been introduced to our Facebook account and he has started to update our statuses. I am still responding to all the comments and enquiries and adding the occasional status updates but I am hoping Tim will take over managing this soon as well. Yes I know I’m giving away the management of the juiciest aspects of web publishing (!!!) but this is very much due to the restriction in resources I am currently facing and the projects I am working on at present.

Information Architecture & web redesign

One of the things that have been keeping both Jeremy and I very busy is looking at restructuring our website information architecture and redesigning the site, in particular, addressing the site navigations. Between Jeremy, Rhiannon and I with support and input from many other people from across the organisation, we have come up with a number of new information architectures. We have now come to a compromise on one particular architecture and are in the process of testing it with users. We have also looked at a few design proposals and are currently deciding on which designer we will go with.

The hardest part of the activities so far has been getting the top level navigations right so that the three arms of Museum of London are all represented and clearly branded, without taking away from the fact that we are all one organisation. I can go on for days about the difficulties we have encountered so far, but for now, I won’t bore you further with it.

Just remember to look out for a whole new website at the end of May!

You are here

Something else my colleagues and I are working on and you should watch out for is our ‘You are here’ campaign at www.youarehere.org.uk. I won’t say any more about this, but check out this link in the coming months!