Creating a new app for Chinese visitors to the University of Oxford’s Museums

This month sees the launch of a new app, introducing the four major Oxford University Museums in English and Chinese. The app, developed by the 2017 Leadership Program Team from UESTC (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China) and in consultation with the Oxford Museums, is a free tool designed to make knowledge about the collections in Oxford more accessible to Chinese speakers. Oxford receives more than 13,000 visits from Chinese tourists each year, and Oxford University is home to more than 1000 Chinese students. The app is available on both Google Play and Baidu – take a look!

Facilitated by Summit Education Enterprises (SEE) and working closely with technical, curatorial and communications staff from the University, the students were able to produce the app in just one month in summer 2017. This partnership has proved that a project with social engagement, international and interdisciplinary aspects can – with careful planning, due care and commitment - can be an exciting opportunity to create something surprisingly meaningful, innovative and beneficial to all stakeholders within a limited length of time. This blog describes the process of collaboration between the three organisations and the development needed to create this product in just four weeks. How did we get on?

UESTC students with (right), Sarah Bruhn (SEE), Susannah Wintersgill (Oxford University Museums) and Andy Haith (University IT Services) University) and (front) Helen Adams and Jessica Suess (Oxford University Museums). Photo © Summit Education Enterprises

In May 2017, the Gardens, Libraries and Museums of the University of Oxford (GLAM) was approached by SEE to work on a digital humanity project that would help promote the Oxford University Museums among Chinese audiences. SEE is an Oxford-based education service and consultancy providing high-quality education and training courses to enrich the learning and aspirational experiences of students and professionals from around the world. The digital humanity project was part of a summer school programme which SEE hosted in collaboration with Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford and UESTC (China), designed to provide leadership development training in arts and sciences for a cohort of 31 talented students. 

To help the students apply and develop their knowledge and skills in electronic science and technology (UESTC is ranked No. 1 in those subjects among all the universities in China) and gain meaningful social engagement experience, SEE proposed to work with GLAM for the students to design a Chinese language mobile application for marketing the Museums among Chinese audiences overseas and here in the UK. Chinese visitors comprise a steadily growing proportion of overseas visitors to Oxford and its cultural institutions, mirroring a general rise in Chinese tourism to the UK, and there is a year-on-year increase in Chinese visiting scholars and students at the University. The potential of such a project, therefore, was easy for us to appreciate. So how did we start?

UESTC students with Dr Yi Samuel Chen (Director and Founder of Summit Education Enterprise as well as a Researcher at the University of Oxford). © Summit Education Enterprises

Week 1

The first steps involved introductions. Prior to the arrival of the students, Susannah Wintersgill (GLAM Director of Communications and Marketing) and Ted Koterwas (Website and Mobile Applications Team Leader, University of Oxford IT Services) already sent the students introductory materials about the Museums and the technical aspects of the development of existing digital resources. Once the students arrived in Oxford, The GLAM Director of Communications and Marketing, Susannah Wintersgill, gave an overview of what GLAM is and does, then representatives from the four museums,Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), Museum of the History of Science (MHS), and Museum of Natural History (MNH). All meetings were scheduled at the PRM so students also got a tour of the galleries there and the most popular exhibits. This process also helped familiarise the students with some of the values of the University of Oxford’s commitment to widening education that ought to be reflected in the digital resource – scholarly excellence, inclusivity and diversity, and free to access. Ted Koterwas and his colleague Andy Haith from our Mobile Applications Team at the University of Oxford’s IT Services also provided close guidance to the students on the benchmark for technical and user acceptability. And the project management team of SEE, especially Sarah Bruhn, coordinated and oversaw the entire process to ensure the smooth operations and cohesion of the project.

PRM Curator Helen Adams gives a gallery tour to the students. © Summit Education Enterprises

Next was a discussion on what the ‘digital resource’ would be. Three GLAM members – PRM, MHS and MNH – had recently launched an audio guide in Mandarin but needed help promoting it. The students shared their cultural knowledge of how Chinese people search for and consume information using their smartphone, and we agreed an app would be a good way of packaging information in one place, having links to social media (especially WeChat), and incorporate existing Museum content such as the audio guide and collections images.

A presentation includes evidence of WeChat statistics © Pitt Rivers Museum

Week 2

After receiving a brief with milestones and important clauses about IP and logos, the students undertook research on aspects of the Museums’ collections with both actual visitors and potential visitors to find out which things interested people and why. They also did some surveying on issues unique to the individual museums. For example, the Pitt Rivers Museum’s ground floor is much busier than the top floor – how could we encourage visitors to go upstairs?

The data was revealing – for example, it seemed the most appealing aspect of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s collections were ‘Textiles and Clothing’ and that better signage and an assurance of the safety of the floor would encourage people to the Upper Galleries!

Students undertook on-and off-site audience research © Pitt Rivers Museum

We discussed how the app would be used and by which audience. Was it to be an in-gallery experience or a resource to be used remotely to engage with the Museums virtually and inspire a visit? The students believed it could be both...

Week 3

Following consultations with staff, including Ted Koterwas and Andy Haith from the Mobile Team , the students had self-selected into four groups focussing on content, design and technical aspects. A huge amount of work happened in this week involving the final draft of wireframes and UX. These were presented to staff and feedback focussed on user tools and services such as the ability to switch between English and Chinese; the inclusion of information about toilets, shops and cafes; and gallery plans that matched those available in the Museum.

Students split into groups to develop technical and design elements © Summit Education Enterprises

Week 4

The students had one more week to tweak the designs, test the app and present the final app ready for launch. The result is a simple, easy-to-use, and yet comprehensive user interface which presents the user with a choice of four museums, each presented in a consistent way offering highlight object tours, resources and facilities. Each museum has its own designated colour within a contemporary design palette and easily recognisable with its branding and logo.

The students achieved an incredible amount in just one month. Together they had created a digital resource containing 110 pages of 30,000 words and 200+ images, backed up by more than 200 programming files and 2.46459 line codes.

Screenshots of the finished app 

The app is already available on Google Play and on Baidu (major Chinese web services provider). It’s FREE so take a look!

We are thrilled with the outputs of this project and have been constantly surprised and impressed with the aptitude, enthusiasm and adaptability of the students, not just because of their obvious technical knowledge in terms of programming and graphic design, but also because we were having to communicate quite complex ideas to each other in English.

We look forward to promoting the new app on various channels (not least the University of Oxford’s WeChat account) and running analytics on its marketing, take-up and use among Chinese visitors.

Helen Adams

Project Curator and Engagement Officer, Pitt Rivers Museum

Identity Without Borders

Ahead of Refugee Week in June 2017 the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Joint Museums Outreach Team undertook numerous community and public engagement events connecting with people from refugee communities. It is a series of activities geared at transforming the museum into a platform for the voices of people who are refugees, many of whom are locally based. The run of events culminated in a free public evening event called Identity Without Borders. 

Here is a taste of some of the events and activities:

Family Day craft activity

Ahead of the numerous community events taking place at the Pitt Rivers Museum training was arranged for Pitt Rivers staff around supporting refugee and asylum seekers and understanding their experiences. It was led by our partners Asylum Welcome, one of the charities and organisations that support refugees in Oxford. The training offered a brilliant opportunity to learn a bit more about the experiences of refugees within our communities and also to think about how the museums are placed to support local refugee and asylum seeking communities to engage in new ways with the collections.

The Museum and Joint Museums Outreach team ran three family days for Oxfordshire's Syrian community and people who access Refugee Resource services. The families used the museum spaces and spent time in the galleries.

BK.LUWO crocheting

The international women's group, BK.LUWO, 'took over' the balcony, working on their current craft projects and chatting to visitors. BK.LUWO is a women's empowerment group based in East Oxford Community centre. They come together twice a week to offer peer support, share skills and just be. We invited them along and they decided to make the Pitt Rivers their home for the afternoon covering the balcony with their craft projects!

Photograph by John Wreford

A Private View was held for community members and organisations involved with the project, of two new temporary displays, Syrians Unknown and Identity Without Borders. Syrians Unknown is a photographic exhibition by John Wreford which will be on display until September 2017. Visit the Upper Gallery to encounter large scale portraits of people displaced from Syria, now surviving and thriving in Istanbul, Turkey. Each person photographed has written powerful testimonies about their experiences. The exhibition is in English and Arabic.

Identity Without Borders is a display of Pitt Rivers Museum objects and loaned objects co-curated by volunteers who came to the UK seeking asylum. The two case displays were developed with community volunteers in partnership with Refugee Resource and Asylum Welcome. Through facilitated visits to the collections volunteers have used familiar museum objects to share stories from their home countries and reflect on their identities.

Nuzhat Abbas singing at Identity Without Borders

We also co-hosted, with TORCH, an event exploring identity, memory and migration. The event was a really interesting and thought provoking session chaired by the Museum Director Dr Laura Van Broekhoven. Lots of people came along to discuss this timely topic. 

Amir Darwish, a Syrian/Kurdish poet, led two Poetry workshops at the museum. Budding and established wordsmiths were encouraged to join in.  People who took part in the workshops also had the chance to perform their poems at the Identity Without Borders event.

The Pitt Rivers Museum has also supported English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision for refugees. Oxford University Student Administration identified the museum as a location to teach English to refugees. The volunteer teachers delivered language lessons for women with young children, and museum provided family activities for the children, enabling parents to attend.

African Dance Oxford performing at Identity Without Borders

Identity Without Borders, was the public evening event celebrating the project, with our community partners performing dance, poetry and music in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The event was a celebration of identity and who we are - showcasing the two new exhibitions: Syrians Unknown and Identity Without Borders. Refugees make up most of the performers and this event was a culmination of activities which have spanned over the last three months.

All of these events are part of the Migration project which aims to connect people who have suffered forced migration to engage with the collections and the PRM as a space. 

Thanks go to ...

Firstly thank you to all the community members and especially Asylum Welcome and Refugee Resource for their support. Thank you to Nicola and Beth who co-managed the project. Many thanks to everyone in the museum who helped get the migration project going, especially to Al and Chris who managed to install both displays at a very busy time. I'd also like to say thank you to George who helped translate activities into Arabic - really, really helpful! 

Jozie Kettle
VERVE Programming and 
Communications Officer

Taking over the Museum

The Pitt Rivers Museum regularly holds events curated by young people taking over the Museum.  Recently we hosted two evening events with groups of young adults working in collaboration with staff to organise and curate alternative social evenings at the Museum, drawing on themes suggested by the collections. This initiative is part of the Need Make Use project.   

In February Oxford University Visual Material Museum Studies students and Oxford Brookes Anthropology Society committee jointly organised an event inspired by women Anthropologists, entitled Journeys. The evening event was planned over a few months. Two key female figures, Mary Kingsley and Beatrice Blackwood, were chosen and objects collected and donated by them were selected to form a trail around the museum.  The students organised every aspect of the event from designing the poster, to creating ticket booking links, inviting speakers to talk, writing text about objects on the trail and curating temporary exhibitions with objects from the collection and artefacts collected by current anthropologists. 

Photographs by Wenqian Wang

On the evening the student volunteers manned the door, helped staff the bar and ran craft activities inspired by journeys. Even the drinks were inspired by Anthropologists, such as gin and tonic, highlighting the quinine Kingsley took medicinally.  Shannon said ''It was a fantastic experience and definitely something I would be interested in taking part in again''.

In March students from Reading College put on a fashion and accessories showcase 'Reading College Fashion meets Pitt Rivers'.  During a visit to the museum the students were challenged with the task of creating outfits under the themes of ‘armour’ and ‘multiform’ that were inspired by the Museum collections.  The students then displayed their final pieces in a fashion show at the Museum. The show highlighted the diverse range of objects and artefacts that inspired the costumes.  The balcony was utilised to display the accessories, sketchbooks and a film of the students talking about their creations.  The film and production side of the event was also student led, undertaken by Reading College media students.  Members of Pitt Youth Action Team helped out at the event by running craft and interactive activities with the education handling collection.  




When ask what they liked about the event one visitor said ''That designs were from objects in the museum, great designs, ideas and impressive pattern cutting and finishing and materials. It was a great show, well done!''.

Photographs by Reading College

Madeleine Ding
VERVE Volunteers Officer and Curatorial Assistant

Casts and copies

The last of our new Archaeology display cases deals with an often-unconsidered part of a museum’s collections, replicas. Authenticity is key with museums, but when used properly we can learn a lot from replicas. Our excellent education team have several in their handling collection that they use to teach with. However, the Museum’s main collection also has around 500 plaster casts, as well as other replica objects made in different materials. Many of these were created as teaching aids in the 19th and 20th century.

Layout for the new Casts and Copies case

Our new Casts and Copies display will show the breadth of replica objects that the Museum holds. They include a plaster cast of the "Clacton Spear", a 400,000 year old wooden point excavated from Clacton on Sea and a plaster cast of "The Venus of Dolni Vesternice", one of the earliest known ceramic objects. This replica was donated by Karol Absolon, who excavated the original and it is known to have been used by Derek Roe, Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at the University in the 1990s in his teaching. 

1921.30.1 Cast of the “Clacton Spear”             

1931.43.1 Cast of the “Venus of Dolni Vesternice”    

Making plaster cast replicas of important objects allowed academics and students to study them more easily. General Pitt-Rivers, like many other collectors of his era, amassed replicas alongside original objects. He also had a great interest in experimental archaeology reproducing objects to attempt to discern how they were used. We have several of these in the Museum’s collections.

1884.125.148 and 1884.122.2 Casts of a palaeolithic hand axe. 1884122.2 is painted with lines showing how it was produced.

One of our more unusual objects included in the new display is a replica Bronze Age spearhead found in Kirtomy Moss, Scotland. At first glance, this appears to be another painted plaster cast, however, it is actually made of paper, carefully painted to resemble the original bronze. A fact that is not really apparent until you lift it up and discover it is almost weightless! 

1894.25.1.1 Paper cast of a Bronze Age spear

Replicas can also become extremely important if the whereabouts of the original object are unknown. The Museum holds a collection of four plaster casts made of the West Buckland hoard, a Middle Bronze Age hoard comprising a torc, bracelet and two axe heads. Two of which will be displayed in our new case. The original objects were never part of Pitt-Rivers’ collection and their location is now unknown, making the plaster casts that the Museum holds even more important. The casts were made by a member of the Ready family. The Ready's worked as restorers at the British Museum in the 19th century and early 20th century. They also sold and restored objects for private collectors, such as Pitt-Rivers, which is how these plaster casts were obtained.

1884.82.121 plaster cast of a bracelet 

1884.119.140 plaster cast of a hand axe 

Work on our new archaeology displays will be happening throughout 2017 so keep watching the Upper Gallery cases for new installations.

Sian Mundell 

VERVE Curatorial Assistant