Craft on the Grass: Pitt Fest 2015

Unlike the blazing sunshine of previous years, the September morning of our third annual Pitt Fest dawned cold and drizzly. Would the weather dampen the appetite of event-goers? Not at all; more than 3300 people came to make, handle, listen, watch, dance, eat, drink and be inspired on the Museums’ lawn – exceeding last year’s attendance by at least 10%.

Volunteer Tim Renders and the Museum's Director Dr Mike O'Hanlon welcome visitors to Pitt Fest 2015
© Pitt Rivers Museum

So what is the point of Pitt Fest? Of course it’s a great deal of fun but there are more fundamental reasons behind it. Two of VERVE’s aims are to impart a clearer message of what the Museum is (or can be) about, and to increase participation. The project’s interpretation of the Museum is not necessarily one of anthropology or ethnography but of technology. Many of the collections are handmade, pre-industrial artefacts that suggest intimate knowledge of materials, design and techniques. Pitt Fest takes just some of the ingenious craft processes evident in the collections and makes them accessible and immediate outside the Museum, to re-engage people of all ages with their hands, and to see things ‘being made’ to contextualise and reanimate those static objects sitting behind glass.

Romilly Swann of The Outside demonstrates natural dyes © Pitt Rivers Museum

This years theme was 'handmade' crafts. So visitors to ‘Pitt Fest: Handmade’ could learn about dyeing techniques with The Outside, fire-making with Axe and Paddle Bushcraft, see a pole-lathe in action with Alistair Philips, or have a go at stone carving, leatherwork or basketry with Nancy Peskett, Katherine Pogson or the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Of course no festival is complete without music, shopping or food, and we tried to inject a global flavour into our line-up; you could try Tibetan dumplings or Peruvian ceviche (raw fish) whilst listening to Ugandan song or Brazilian capoeira, before perusing the market stalls of fair-trade and local artisanal goodies.

Families could have a go at face-painting, object handling making badges or a host of other creative activities run by museum volunteers. All day long, the these tables were filled with people of all ages busy making clay pots, paper hats, stick harmonicas, peg dolls and willow hurdles.

Volunteers and expert paper milliners Emma and Megan (left)
and staff from the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) from Reading (right) © Pitt Rivers Museum

Krisztina helping a child decorate a peg doll @ Pitt Rivers Museum

  

Volunteers Liz and Martin teach people how to weave willow © Pitt Rivers Museum

Volunteer Damon showing a visitor an mbira (thumb piano) © Pitt Rivers Museum

To get a taste of the day check out our short film:

Pitt Fest: Handmade! 2015 from Pitt Rivers Museum on Vimeo.

Putting on a festival takes enormous amounts of time, planning, brawn, and goodwill. We are grateful to the many staff, collaborators and volunteers who helped make Pitt Fest 2015 such a success. Now time to start planning next year!

How to Sort your Stuff: Writing a play about Museums

One of the main aims of VERVE is to think about how both the collections and the Museum space can be used to inspire new work, new ideas, and new activity. Since 'performance' is the theme for the project's first phase, the opportunity to work with a contemporary theatre company seemed like a fitting collaboration. Here, Isabel Quinzaños from the group reflects on the experience:

Over a few days in August 2013, a group of budding writers, performing and directors got together at the Pitt Rivers Museum to produce a script about both the Pitt Rivers and the Ashmolean museums.

It all started simply enough. Touring theatre company Out of Joint, based in London, set out to organise an education workshop that would focus on a devising/writing technique called verbatim, which means to create a play out of people’s words. Examples of this kind of plays are The Laramie Project by Tectonic Theater Project, London Road by Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork, The Permanent Way by David Hare and Talking to Terrorists by Robin Soans. The process of writing such plays typically involves conducting a series of interviews to people interested and involved with the topic you have chosen and recording their words in order to use them later on in a play. It is like the theatre version of documentary film.

© Pitt Rivers Museum

The group consisted of ten participants from a wide array of geographical locations and professional backgrounds: an academic in the course of her Architecture PhD, mature and starting performers, a Literary PhD student from Aberystwyth, a professional writer, a budding director, multi-taskers, and people looking to start a company. Under the lead of Naomi Jones they set off to interview staff, volunteers and punters at the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean museums to find out what goes on behind the scenes there. It took a lot of hard work and dedication from the course participants to make the play happen - finding people to interview, recording their exact words and then transcribing them. Then, the whole material was put together and decisions had to be made about what story they could tell. Naomi did the first official edit, but all participants had an input afterwards about what they felt should be in or not. On the final day, they rehearsed the play and put on a little ‘private’ viewing of it for museum staff and invited guests.

 

Sample of the script from 'How to Sort Your Stuff'  © Pitt Rivers Museum

The result was a moving and quirky piece of theatre that gave the group a real insight into how museum staff create the environment that we - the visitors - experience, let alone their perspective on their favourite pieces, the ones they dislike the most and what they think of their work.

© Pitt Rivers Museum

For the participants the best thing was meeting the fascinating personalities that we never meet on our normal museum visits, plus learning about the thought process behind the placement of every single object in the museum -what is written about those objects to tell us a story. In the end, the work museum staff do is as much about us as visitors as it is about the objects they safeguard.

Everyone involved in this course had a great time and was really pleased with the final script which the Pitt Rivers has taken to keep in their archive... maybe they’ll even let you have a read of it if you ask nicely.

Some feedback on the course:

“Naomi was brilliant as course leader. She was practical, energetic, engaging and inspiring. It was easy to trust her and she was happy to share experiences she had with the type of work we created.”

“...it (the course) was led by a professional director - of course that meant that what was learned was of high quality - but also the logistics of completing the course; researching, writing, editing, actioning, rehearsing and performing a new piece of theatre. That we managed to do so is very much thanks to Naomi for directing the whole process.”

Isabel Quinzaños, PA to Artistic Director and Education Administrator, Out of Joint

Collections Care and Careers Day: lifting the lid on museum work

The Museum held its first 'Collections Care and Careers' Day on Saturday 14 September. Held in collaboration with Oxford Open Doors, this is a new type of event, envisioned by the VERVE project to help open up the way the Museum works and offer members of the public the chance to talk with behind-the-scenes staff, helping to foster a shared sense of why caring for collections is important. 

The event was primarily aimed at teenagers and young adults who might interested in a career in the museums and heritage sector, although anyone was welcome to come along and in the end we had a lovely variety of ages attending, from 6 to 60!

The day was a great opportunity for project staff to show the often-unseen aspects of Museum life. Small groups went on tours around the Collections, Conservation and Technical Services areas - ostensibly following the path of an object as it travels through the Museum departments - and here their various roles and duties were explained; from cataloguing and labelling, to pest management, packing items for loan and dealing with hazardous materials. This approach meant we finished up in the galleries with the 'final' stage being the display, making it easier for visitors to digest the various processes and understand the level of work involved. As one said, it was a "brilliantly enlightening tour of lots of areas of the Museum – especially great to go on the same journey as a newly accessioned object." Another said, "Great tour, really enjoyed meeting all the people involved,"  so we hope made the point about the kind of people who work in museums - passionate, friendly and appreciative of the unique environment in which they work.

Meanwhile, downstairs, staff were on hand throughout the day with some of the tools of their trade (such as gloves, journals, databases and scale models) to answer questions from the public. Joining us from the Oxford University Careers Service was Lucy Hawkins who was able to provide advice on volunteering, relevant university courses, internships and professional publications such as Museums Journal. With thanks to the University of Manchester, the University of Leicester, the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, and the University of Leeds for providing course brochures. 

Tours of the Conservation and Collections Departments © Pitt Rivers Museum

VERVE's Collections Care and Career events will run twice a year. Next year we are likely to hold it in the spring to coincide with university term time. We hope to involve staff from a number of different departments within the Museum with the aim of informing and inspiring children and young people to consider the importance of their heritage, as well as the possibility of working within the sector. 

John Simmons, Head of Technical Services, talks to a visitor
about his team's work © Pitt Rivers Museum

The day was well-attended by around 100 people, ranging of people from those just beginning to consider working in areas such as conservation, archives and anthropology, to those interested in perhaps a change in career, to those who were just, well, interested! As staff, we all enjoyed the chance to demonstrate just some of the range of jobs available in museums - did you know, there are more than 50 distinct roles at the Pitt Rivers? - as well as answer some interesting and occasionally tricky questions about both the PRM and museums in general.