The working life of Museum of London

October’s Dickens Book Club has already kicked off in my household, descending as I have into Dickens’ murky world of the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy five in A Tale of Two Cities.

Despite having studied English Literature at university my Dickens readometer is a little stunted (blame the tutors). Great Expectations (favourite all-time novel) and Oliver Twist (precious few show tunes) are the only two books I have made it to the end of. Even my dad’s fervent enthusiasm couldn’t see me to the end of The Pickwick Papers while the sheer length of Bleak House seemed overwhelming to the point of being unreadable.

But I’m ready to start anew. I’m already excited about peering through the thick mist that envelops so many of Dickens’ novels to unearth the maze of characters beneath; to find new favourite phrases from Dickens’ witticisms (the indignant ‘I’ll eat my head!’ a particular favourite from Great Expectations); and to discover the moments that will stay with me long after the book is done, just like those between Pip and Joe – what larks!

At forty six chapters long I am being pragmatic about the challenge that lays before us. My plan is to read two chapters per day for the first fifteen days of October, then one chapter per day until the end of the month. If my maths is correct this should see us glide neatly towards the final chapters in time for Halloween and November’s book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

So I’ll be captaining our speedy ship through the 400 plus pages of Dickens’ fourteenth novel via updates on Facebook and Twitter – please do share your thoughts, comments, favourite quotes and anything else you’d like to discuss on those pages.

Finally, don’t forget you can buy your copy of A Tale of Two Cities from Foyles Bookshop and receive a discount when using the code ‘MOLBC’.

If Charles Dickens was alive today do you think he would be part of the Twitterati or an avid Facebook fan? (Remember, this is the man who in September 1860 burnt the majority of his correspondence).

Here at the Museum of London we have decided to honour Dickens’ work with a major exhibition Dickens and London which opens on 9 December 2011 in advance of the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 2012.

We have plans for a number of social media initiatives that we hope will enhance both the exhibition and your visit, the first of which launches this Monday 12 September – a virtual Dickens Book Club’s on both Twitter and Facebook.

Although an open forum to discuss all aspects of Dickens’s work, we will be suggesting a book a month to read and posting our thoughts (and hopefully chatting to you about your thoughts) across both Twitter and Facebook starting with September’s chosen novel: Great Expectations.

Other confirmed titles so far include: A Christmas Carol (naturally for December!), Barnaby Rudge in January 2012 (we will let you into a secret, this is such a large novel someone in the office is already reading it!) and Oliver Twist in April 2012.

So why not join us as we explore some of Dickens’ greatest works alongside some of his lesser known titles.

We are also looking for you to suggest titles to include so if you have a favourite please do let us know either via Twitter or Facebook and we will try to feature them before the exhibition closes on 10 June 2012.

Our Twitter and Facebook accounts will also be home to sneak previews of what to expect when you visit the exhibition and insights from our exhibition curators via our blog pages again in advance and during the course of the exhibition, so be sure to follow us or check our website regularly.

Look out too for an exciting short story initiative launching in November based on some of Dickens’ ideas for stories and characters which did not find their way into print.

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

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!

This month the Museum of London Docklands launches a web-based initiative bringing to life London’s Docklands in the early twentieth century through the diary extracts of a young messenger boy employed by the Port of London Authority at the time. Recently donated to our collection, the diary details Oscar’s daily activities both at work and home, personal interests (Oscar loved to read) and details of the things he enjoyed when not working ranging from comics and sweets he bought, to visits to the music hall. 

The Museum plans to feature the corresponding daily diary entries on the homepage of the Museum of London Docklands website and on other social media sites starting from January 1^st 2010.

A planned online archive of all diary entries and further supporting details relating to the subjects that Oscar covers in his diary will also be updated regularly. 

Oscar was 15 when he started to work in the East India Docks in 1918 ferrying messages and mail between different docks and Port of London Authority offices. Oscar would have been provided with a uniform and would be expected to look smart at all times (Oscar notes making a “boot pad” on Sunday January 5^th 1919, possibly to keep his boots clean). 

Although work days for Oscar could be arduous he still found time for fun as the start of his diary entry for Wednesday 22^nd January 1919 highlights: “got chapped hands today. Played between 12.30 and 1.30 in the sack shed”.  Oscar was also saving to buy a bicycle of his own, by giving his father a few pence at a time towards the cost. By the time the entries in the diary finish in July 1919 he had given his father 1/6d (7.5p) towards the cost.

Oscar’s diary is currently on display in the Sainsbury’s Study Centre at Museum of London Docklands.  Find out more about Oscar’s thoughts and duties daily on our website from January 1^st 2010 and follow Oscar on Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/OscarKirk1919

Last week I wrote up my conclusions from the research I carried out on Museum of London (MOL) and its use of Facebook and blogs. To summarise:

• 100% of members want MOL to continue on Facebook,
• Most members would recommend MOL and MOL on Facebook to other people,
• Very few visitors were engaging with MOL through Facebook and the blog sites,
• More effort needs to be put into improving the communication on Facebook and blog to make it effective,
• MOL was not utilising Facebook or the blogs enough at the time of research and used it for information purposes only,
• It appeared that people wanted to receive information but not necessarily engage with MOL in any way other than to read emails, update alerts, and the blog entries, and
• People want to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way.

So what are we doing now to ensure we utilise these available resources in the best way possible?

I have taken the feedbacks and lessons learned from my research to ensure that more use is made of all of our social software sites and activities. Although there are resource constraints, I have been attempting to:

• Add regular Facebook status updates on the MOL Facebook fan page,
• Twitter regularly on the MOL Twitter account,
• Blog more frequently on this blog site, and
• I have been vigilantly ensuring that all comments on MOL Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and Flickr, and all tweets and Twitter messages at Museum of London is responded to.

In addition to this, I am working on a new ‘Online’ section on the Museum of London website to bring together all these activities into a central location. I am also emphasising the use of social software to my colleagues and attempting to pass on responsibilities to various departments to manage some of these tools.

We are a long way from accomplishing all that which can be accomplished with all the available social software, but slowly and surely, we are heading towards that line were our visitors are able to engage with us in their preferred platforms and we are able to say ‘yes, we are listening and we care’.

On another note, I have finally visited our Modern London Galleries currently under development, due to open in spring 2010 and I have taken many, many pictures, so watch out for my next post to find out about all the exciting developments!