The working life of Museum of London

Ladies & Gents, VIP6 Has Left The Building

This week we wrapped things up as we completed the 6th project within our Volunteer Inclusion Programme at the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive.

The final week of all our projects is really a final half week as it was only the mornings spent working through the collections at LAARC. Both Monday & Friday’s teams completed their experience by working with Glynn on the final boxes of animal bone from the 1974 site at the Triangle of Billingsgate Buildings (TR74). Lots of boxes of lovely animal bone have now been placed into good sturdy new bags with legible labels and most importantly, organised into numerical order, using their context numbers (numbers relating to the layer in the ground in which the objects were found). With this site now complete we moved on to completing another site, 8 Union Street (8US74) and even worked through boxes of a third site, Baynard House, (UT74).

So, after an early lunch, we boarded the bus and then the DLR and journeyed to Museum of London Docklands! Our afternoon was spent enjoying some fantastic tours led by the excellent folks at our Canary Wharf site.

First of all we started with a tour of another of the museum’s archives. Or indeed, two, as we got to have a peak behind the scenes at the Port of London Authority & the Sainsbury Archive stores. Some great objects and historical documents were brought out for our perusal, whilst archivists Claire, Clare & Jayne explained how their archives operate.

Following this is was down to the recently opened exhibition about Girl Guides. Curator Jim Gledhill led us round the space, highlighting aspects of the exhibition, showing us special objects selected for the cases and providing us with information about the history of Girl Guides (who are celebrating their centenary).

We ended our day with a brilliant tour around Sailortown – the reconstructed streets of the 19th Century. Visitor hosts, Dave & Sue took us round the ins and outs of the dark narrowed streets and buildings as we were absorbed by the sights, sounds & smells(!) of 1850’s Wapping.

Wednesday’s Capital A team were also down at Docklands, only they had the comfort of the Museum’s Wilberforce Theatre to complete their experience. Having spent the past 9 weeks building up a portfolio of photos and video and using these to create short films, we finally got the chance to relax and watch the final results. 6 really good films were made, all with real character. A diverse, fun range of shorts, they all told a story, each with a different experience of volunteering at LAARC.

And that’s it for another project. In fact, that could well be the last project based at LAARC… In the meantime if you would like to have a say in deciding the best object from VIP6 you can still vote until next Wed at noon.

Thanks To all VIP6 Volunteers!

The seventh and final VIP project commences in October. More will be revealed during September, but all we can say at the moment is that this project is going to be bigger, bolder and be as inclusive as can be. And EVERYONE, including YOU can get involved. wAtch thIs spAce…