The working life of Museum of London

Regular readers of these pages will know that our current Volunteer/Visitor Inclusion Project is based in the museum’s Archaeology In Action exhibition, every Monday, Tuesday and Friday. But what’s going on on Wednesdays?

It’s only a fantastic cross-generational, multimedia, archaeological archiving project with the University of the 3rd Age and Mossbourne Academy 6th Form Students!!!

Our bakers dozen of a team mixes retired students from the U3A with the 6th formers to work through archives dug up in the 1970’s, that are in need of improvements and a thoroughly good audit.

Each week, we give these guys a different type of material to work through. Last week it was a selection of objects from Arcadia Buildings (AB78) dug in 1978 and these included some rather nice bone, ceramic and stone artefacts. This week it’s been metal objects from Merton (MPY88) including rusty old bits that can only be identified using x-rays.

The team work through the boxes systematically, checking the packing of the objects making sure their packed to our standards before auditing the finds, updating their location to show that they have been accounted for.

Now, all this archiving is quite fun in itself as the participants get to see and handle a full range of excellent objects, however, we don’t just stop there. In addition, we’ve giving them digital cameras, which they use to record their progress as the weeks go on.

Towards the end of the project, they get to spend two sessions at the Museum of London in our E-Learning  Studio, where they’ll be creating short films, using the photos they’ve taken.

Last year’s U3A/ 6th Form collaboration was Highly Commended in the London Volunteers in Museums Awards 2010 and we reckon this year’s team could also be strong contenders in next years best team category. The U3A have even put together their own wiki website to share and discuss their progress. You can find out more at : www.u3alaarc2010.wetpaint.com

And if you want to find out what we do on Thursdays… well.. you’ll just have to wait for that blog!