Hidden Histories filming

Hi all, just wanted to update everyone on the filming situation; I now have the material for 6 short videos (one to two and a half minutes in length), which I shall be assembling soon.  I have Greg on the Astbury camera, Liz on the capacitor, Dom on the seeds, Rita on the educational posters, Becky on the printing press, and myself on the hygrometer.

When Mike’s back I’ll be filming him on the Newlyn-Philips machine, and Emily will be doing her short introduction, the transcript of which she has posted below.  I will then put the pieces together, edit where necessary, and we will have 8 short videos to go up on our YouTube channel.

This should be a nice project to coincide with the installation of the exhibit in the Sadler building.  If anyone has any other objects they want to do, please let me know, because I’m hoping this can be an ongoing, on-growing part of the museum which will serve to consolidate and strengthen our online presence.

UPDATE: You can view all of these 1 minute videos on our YouTube channel here.

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Hidden histories update

Thanks everyone who came to the meeting on Wednesday, and I look forward to your posts on your chosen objects.  For those of you not there, this is what we discussed and decided, more or less.

All together we now have at least 9 objects for the case: 2 from physics (and possibly another from maths), 2 from botany/ biology/ herbarium, 1 from history of education, 1 from medicine, 1 from English, pieces from the Newlyn-Philips machine and the Astbury camera.  The plan is now for each person who chose an object to tell us about it in 4 main ways: by talking about it on camera for 1 minute, writing a catalogue entry, writing c.500wds on it on the blog and later putting this on the website linked to the catalogue entry.  And finally to reduce all that to a 30wd label for the case.

Everyone seemed pretty happy with the Hidden Histories theme, each pleasingly interpreting this theme in a different way.  The theme can be taken to mean hidden objects and collections but also hidden stories and the hidden history of the university, which it was generally felt, is not celebrated at Leeds as much as at other universities, but is interesting and a potential selling point of Leeds university.

That’s all, please watch out for (or write and post) information on all the objects so far chosen for the case.

Museum News – March 2011

This March our main museum news has been that we are now preparing to put our showcase (last used in X-ray marks the spot – http://www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/Astbury/) in a new location near the Philosophy department.  Our project now is to fill it.  The museum group got together on 16th March and began to plan the case.  We each have to find an object for the case from the various departments and collections we work with, before our next meeting, and have something to say on it.  We came up with a couple of ideas for themes for the case: ‘How do we know things?’; ‘Why is the museum in the philosophy department in Leeds?’ which whatever we decide could be weaved into label text.  Since that meeting Jessica Shilton suggested, after we began searching for objects, that we make this more of a general introduction.  With that in mind, I offer this as our new working title: ‘Hidden histories and secret science‘, to show that Leeds University is littered with scientific objects where you wouldn’t expect them (like in ULITA) and historical objects if you only know where to look (like in Physics).  Please comment on this or suggest alternatives.  Next month we plan to get Michael Kay’s project going and start to film each of us talking about the object we’ve chosen for the case to put on YouTube.

Elsewhere on the museum project, Adrian Wilson has been investigating possible ways in which we might work with the West Yorkshire Playhouse.  The playhouse was started by a campaign involving Doreen Newlyn, the wife of the inventor of Leeds Business School (LUBS)’s Newlyn-Phillips Machine – http://www.leeds.ac.uk/hpsmuseum/newlynphillips.htm.  The playhouse has a Newlyn gallery.