Rachel: Welcome to Talking Intern, a podcast by 5 trainee curators working in museums and galleries across Cornwall.
Sarah: So if you’re thinking about getting started as a museum professional, we’re here to share with you some of our experiences and lessons learned, setbacks and successes from the early stages of our careers.
Katie: So join us…
Sian: Sian, from Wheal Martyn Clay Works, a Victorian China Clay Works in mid Cornwall.
Sa: Sarah, from Bodmin Keep, Cornwall’s Army Museum.
K: Katie, also from Bodmin Keep.
Lizzy: Lizzy, from Falmouth Art Gallery.
R: And Rachel, from the Museum of Cornish Life.
Si: As we make a daring attempt to break into the museum…
R: …Industry!
Si: …Industry…yes that’s what I meant.
Sa: Coming up on today’s episode…
Si: I would never have done this project were it not for lockdown
K: You saying that about moving your paintings around, I'm imagining a Chuckle Brothers ‘to me, to you’ situation, trying to keep two meters apart.
Sa: Lockdown, for me, has really just expanded the definition of what's a curator actually is
R: What are your thoughts on that, Sean, Sian?
Si: Well,
All: [laughter]
R: Shall I say that again?
Sa: Hi everyone, welcome to Talking Intern. I’m Sarah, hosting today’s podcast on the Curator in Lockdown. Just before we get into the meaty bits, I want to hear about how you guys are all doing on I think it’s week 14 of the Lockdown? We can feel it easing a little bit can’t we because Boris is about to announce today that our museums can reopen in July. But I’m going to go to you Katie, how are you doing?
K: Absolutely got nothing to do with museums, but I have hedgehogs in the garden, so I am great. I have six baby hedgehogs and every single time they come out I rush to go see them and I’m like ahh you’re so cute! Yeah so I’m feeling very happy.
Sa: Ah how can you not love hedgehogs?
R: I’m so jealous!
[laughing]
Sa: How about you Sian?
Si: Yeah, I’ve just had a week off, so I’m a little bit sort of going through all my emails and everything now and trying to put my museum brain back on. I don’t know about you guys but I’m finding this weird period another kind of transition period because the heart of lockdown you kind of got used to doing digital work and whatever, there was some sort of flow but now we’re getting back into the mindset of opening up again so things are all just kind of flurried and rushed and everything again. So it’s exciting in some ways but yeah it’s a little bit strange.
Sa: Yeah everything’s definitely up in the air again, we knew where we stood before and now… [laughs] How about you Lizzy?
L: Ah I’m alright. Just very apprehensive about going back in now. I’ve got to go back in Wednesday, yeah going back in on Wednesday and I’m not looking forward to being outside. It’s scary now. [Laughs]
Sa: It is a bit, like, I feel a little anxious sometimes.
R: I think it’s because you’re used to getting into kind of a little bubble and then when you have to come outside that bubble it’s a little bit different and yeah we don’t quite know what to expect.
Sa: Mm absolutely. So how about you Rachel?
R: I’m well thank you. But I am in the museum today. So I come in a couple of days a week to carry on different projects that I’ve been working on, obviously we observe social distancing but I’ve taken myself off to the costume store now so I’m recording this surrounded by mannequins and boxes and some Edwardian mourning clothes at the moment so it feels very bizarre to be talking to you guys in this setting. But yeah I’m well thank you.
Sa: Ah it’s so good to hear you guys, hear your voices. I’m feeling, I think, fairly optimistic today actually. I’m quite looking forward to a return to Cornwall in July, getting back in the museum.
Si: Yes, I’m so excited!
Sa: I know, It’s so exciting. The amount of sun I’m getting right now is honestly lifting me out of this like big dip in my lockdown mood that I think I was stuck in for the last couple of weeks. So I’m feeling pretty grateful for that.
R: I’m so excited for when we can actually socially distance socialise together again.
Si: Yes!
[laughing]
R: It would be so lovely I miss you guys.
Sa: Take me to the sea please, take me to the sea!
[laughing]
Sa: Alright well let’s get stuck into our first question. So I want to ask you guys how your role as a curatorial intern changed since the lockdown began? So what sort of projects have you had to leave behind? What work have you been able to adapt? And actually what new opportunities have arisen for you? So I’ll come to Rachel first.
R: Yeah so I mean when lockdown first began it was a bit of a shock to be taken out of our buildings. It was like being taken out of your natural habitat, what we’ve got use to for the last few months. I’d been working on documenting our art store the day before lockdown was announced and had left twine and labels on my desk which gave it a bit of a Mary Celeste vibe when I did return physically to the museum space. As trainee curators I think we’d probably all envisaged handling collections and suddenly that wasn’t possible, but other possibilities arose allowing us to develop our digital skills and focus on things like museum policy, which for me was really valuable and actually having some time away from the museum setting gave me a chance to really consider why we operate in the way that we do and take that step back to isolate and identify properly what makes a museum an effective community hub which is what it should be essentially.
I am back in the museum a couple of days a week now, observing social distancing, so I have been able to continue documenting the art store. I work on the upstairs balcony which has a great view of the museum and to be completely honest I doubt I’ll ever find another workspace which is quite so special. I was due to be opening my first exhibition in June, which didn’t happen, but it’s been postponed rather than cancelled and I think opening day, whenever that may be, will feel all the more special because of the extra work and planning which everyone’s put into the exhibition. Kind of staff and volunteers included in that. So I’m really looking forward to when we finally do get to open. But Lizzy I don’t know if that’s been a similar experience for you?
L: Yeah obviously I’m no longer in the gallery spaces or handling any artworks. This summer we were supposed to be doing a sensory exhibition featuring artworks in many different mediums from three dimensional works that you could touch, really interesting painting works, to film and audio. Now all the whole kind of programme is changed. It’s all kind of up in the air at the moment. Before the lockdown I was doing our personal projects that we’re all doing, mind was setting up an exhibition for the Cornwall Schools Art Collection. Being at home has given me a lot more time to think about my exhibition in depth. So that’s due to be in September. So at least I’ve got plenty of time to kind of sit with that. We’ve always had groups and children’s activities in the gallery spaces before lockdown, but now those are all postponed as well, so I have been planning on how to use the space so it doesn’t feel really empty whilst also having plenty of room to move around in. Kind of finding a balance between it being spacious enough but not empty. An opportunity I have now, is there’s more room to experiment with is the interpretation ideas and try out new things because of being in the Lockdown. You just get all this time to just kind of wonder ‘How can I do this?’ so it’s the time to really experiment. So I’m coming up with ideas for downloadable resources such as PDF booklets and worksheets and things like that.
Si: And it’s funny that you bring up interpretation because yeah it’s just been interpretation, interpretation, interpretation. It’s been the thing we’ve been working on most as a team in Wheal Martyn. And it’s been good in some ways but a little frustrating as well because it’s all been done via Microsoft Teams and there’s only so much you can do in that way. But for me, some of the work that I was already doing pre-lockdown I could already continue to do. So some interpretation work and some research and work updating the guide book. And things like that. But one opportunity that did kind of arise for me just because of lockdown or, you know, in a way I had to change the way I was working and what projects I was focusing on was, um, there was obviously a need to put out images that were going to uplift people's moods, but at the same time kind of celebrate this little area of Cornwall.
So obviously Wheal Martin clay works is a China clay mining museum. It was a huge industry and Mid-Cornwall and the whole landscape has just been completely changed by this mining industry. So we set up this project called ‘Celebrate Clay Country’ and it just took off. So many people have submitted entries to it and loads of people have used the hashtag or sent in pictures via Facebook and that's been excellent. And because of that directly, because of this lockdown project, I would never have done this project were it not for lockdown, but because of this, it's now going to be our summer exhibition in Wheal Martin, or it's what we were hoping to be our summer exhibition. So we're going to hopefully display certain images across the outside of Wheal Martin in a kind of trail. I need to get people's permissions to do that obviously.
But then they might also become our very first items in our digital collection. So this whole thing could kickstart our digital collecting in Wheal Martin, which is so exciting. Um, and the fact that this was all born from lockdown, uh, is actually kind of a nice thing really, that we've had something so creative and so interesting, and innovative, um, that's come out of lockdown for us. And I'm really so excited about it because not only is it really celebrating the history and heritage of this bit of Cornwall, and I think that's what small rural museums you know do best in some ways, um, when they're very specialized in the way the Wheal Martin is, is that they really are a kind of heritage centre. And you, you know, you do want visitors from across the world and across the UK visiting you, but you also want to have a connection with your, your community as well. And I think that celebrate clay country has done that. So pretty excited about that summer exhibition. So that's my main project at the moment, but I don't know about you, Katie, if you found any exciting things that have arisen from lockdown?
K: Yeah, so like everybody, my work is a lot more digital now. Um like Sarah, I'm not even in the county anymore. I'm back in the Northwest. And I really miss working on objects and doing packing and conservation, which I never thought that I would miss packing, packing objects into boxes. I'm really glad that we did so much of it at the start of our internship because otherwise, you know, if we'd saved it for, ‘Oh, we'll do it later when you're a bit more experienced’, than we never would have done any. So I'm really glad we, we did it, did it in January. So this summer, my exhibition Frontiers of Fashion, which was meant to be a physical one is going to be online. And that's enabled a lot of collaboration which wouldn't have happened. So collaborating with fashion curators and military historians and schools and universities. Um, same as you Lizzie, it was supposed to be a tactile exhibition. It was supposed to be, you know, touching the fabric and, and a lot of, a lot of feelings things which now is going to be tricky because of infection risk when the museum can open again. So we've had to switch that and make it so that the objects can't be touched, unfortunately, but the other opportunities we've had are to do digital projects like this podcast that we really wouldn't have done if it weren't for lockdown, because we were talking to each other on a fairly regular basis in person. So we didn't need to have a podcast to chat to each other. What about you, Sarah? You're the other one that's out of the out of the County. I know we both miss Cornwall a lot.
Sa: I know I miss it so much. And I also like you, I actually find myself missing making all those like tissue paper doughnuts and sausages and all that lovely stuff that we pack up our objects with. I, um, it was quite therapeutic work and I find myself getting bored of staring at my screen all the time. But that being said, lockdown, I think has ironically opened up a lot more opportunities, um, than I ever had before when I was actually working in the physical museum space. And for me, it's really just expanded the definition of what's a curator actually is as with all of you guys, I've been enjoying learning lots of new digital skills. So one of my projects was to teach myself how to produce some professional looking videos with some nifty new software. Another one I've been working on building, um, our museum, a chat bot, but really like just echoing what many of you said already, the way that we work with collections has just been the most dramatic and I think obvious change. So not only have like all the collections care responsibilities been put on hold basically. Um, but the way that I'm going about curating exhibitions has, um, massively shifted. So right before the lockdown, I was about to install a new display in one of our galleries, looking at souvenirs and spoils, which were acquired by soldiers in the army. However, I instead I had to translate that into a digital format and launch it online. What's more challenging now though, is that I'm sort of in the research stages for larger exhibition, but have no access to the collection, really or the collections database, which makes crafting a really good object-based exhibition narrative, pretty difficult. I think the whole situation this sort of renewed emphasis on digital media has only served to just reinforce how important it is to have our collections digitized, not only for remote working remote curating, but also just in terms of like accessibility for our audiences.
That sort of brings me on to my second question. During this lockdown, museums have faced really a crisis of identity. They've been faced with a reality, which has prevented them from carrying out what is sort of traditionally been seen as their ‘core’ work. So inviting visitors into our physical space to see their objects. We've seen museums channel lots of their efforts into going digital some with more success than others. But as we have no idea how long these distancing measures will be in place, how long until vaccine will be available, you know, it's a very uncertain future that museums will be operating in. So in what ways do you guys see the role of the curator changing and adapting to the new normal? Lizzie, what do you think?
L: If we are to adapt to the ‘new normal’, we really need to get out of our comfort zones. I think programming needs to be thoughtful and welcoming for the public after so long being stuck in doors. It needs to be something people really want to see and engage with, that’s uplifting. Losing our ability to actually invite people, to interact with displays and objects means that we need to push our boundaries when it comes to our interpretation, make it memorable, make it more interesting as well. Not just having standard labels, but maybe something else that’s a bit more interactive. But at the same time you can't touch it. So I don't know, like in the art gallery sense, we're going to be hanging an exhibition of paintings and saying things in our captions along the lines of, ‘can you see this?’ or ‘what do you notice in this painting’ or ‘find this object hidden in the painting’. Just kind of trying to make it a bit more fun really.
Few people will actually want to stand in a room reading really long text panels. I guess people have been doing a lot of reading at home in lockdown. So maybe they're a bit fed up of it. I don't know. So we need to get something a bit more memorable. Many museums and galleries have really taken the move to digital engagement in their stride, but a few still feel a little bit lost with it. So we need to make sure we're all kind of collaborating and supporting each other and just like the move to digital, keeping it up really, so future accessibility online is greatly increased. I'm still not sure how we plan on taking down and installing an exhibition with people two meters apart, not all of them, but most of our paintings are under two meters apart. We have some two meter-wide paintings, but it's going to be difficult working it out. So I've got my own mask and everything ready.
K: You saying that about moving your paintings around, I'm imagining a Chuckle Brothers ‘to me, to you’ situation, trying to keep two meters apart. There was an Association of Independent Museums, they had an online conference last week and it was a really interesting point raised, that obviously this is a time of crisis, but it's also a time of opportunity for us. And it's a chance for museums to ask, what do people really want and what do they need? And are we meeting those goals or are we just drifting into ‘well we've always done this? So we'll carry on doing that’. I know it's a good, it's a good chance for, for reflection. And I'm really hopeful from a personal perspective that this is going to improve accessibility for disabled visitors because everybody's putting things online. If you're housebound or if, our physical museum at Bodmin Keep, um, we don't have a lift cause it's a very old building. So if you're in a wheelchair, you cannot access the museum. Whereas we can now bring it to them. And we can have online exhibitions. We can have subtitled videos, we can have 3d tours, you know, all of those things. And I think the role of the curator is going to be different for every museum, especially those who are in really severe financial difficulties, because they're not going to have the opportunity for reflection because they're going to be focused on how they need to increase their income and that donations rapidly. But from an education or an exhibition point of view, I think it might really help museum professionals to create content. That's more in the moment rather than planned five years into the future. I'm thinking, especially of the Museum of London's collecting COVID project who were asking for physical and digital donations that reflect this time. I think that's a wonderful, rapid collecting project. That's going to be really interesting in the future. When we look back on this, on this period of history. What about you, Rachel?
R: Well, to me, the role of the curator is to tell stories either through interpretation, which often figures as texts and exhibits through the object they've selected or through supporting learning resources. Um, firstly I think the objective of telling the story can be achieved digitally via online exhibitions. But I also think it has to be said that not everybody has access to digital technology or wishes to engage in that way. Ultimately I hope that once museums do reopen, the curation of exhibitions would take place in a more physical sense. Once again, even if museums have to implement social distancing measures because it would be wrong for those without access to technology to be excluded from collections and essentially their own heritage when digital disadvantage is a very real thing. What are your thoughts on that, Sean, Sian?
Si: Well,
All: [laughter]
R: Shall I say that again?
Si: No, no, I think it’s fine. Especially before we were recording this, I had a malfunction with my microphone. So I did sound like a man. [laughter] So I agree with you that digital exclusion is definitely a thing. There are certainly people who are not online and to purely go to a digital kind of platform and ignore, um, the physical platform of a museum would be completely wrong. And we shouldn't do that. A big example is, um, one of the volunteers with us, he doesn't use the internet, but he's a key volunteer and all throughout lockdown, you know, we've had a phone conversation with him once a week, made sure that he's okay, made sure that he's had a shopping and everything. So if museums kind of went purely to digital, you'd be leaving behind people like that and that's unfair. But at the same time, in my view, um, being a curator is to care for the collections and you can care for them in a physical way. Obviously you can handle them, you can clean them, you can make sure that they're safe and they're not in any sort of harm, but also it's caring for the information around an object. So there is still work that you can do more from home or there is still work that you can put more digitally and get across this kind of history and heritage and collections across to more people in it in a digital way. There is one project, a citizen curators project in at the moment. That's going to be really interesting because the whole point of it is to train up, um, volunteers with curatorial skills. And I think the next year, which will be year three, they're going to really hone in on, um, having a more digital way of going about it. So I really look forward to seeing what elements of being a curator they pull out and highlight in this more digital program. I do think that museums, when they're kind of at their best, they are places that are, you know, caretaking bits of history and heritage. And so there are ways that you can connect to the community digitally that museums perhaps just were not doing before, but not only digitally, you know, it's not digitally, doesn't have to be the opposite of being in the physical museum space. You can also do more actual community outreach. And I want museums to connect to community centres and to connect to even Facebook groups that are dedicated to towns and villages and things like that. There are ways that museums could definitely, um, connect to their communities. And I think that's going to be interesting, uh, post lockdown, especially. So I don't know if you've got similar thoughts on that, Sarah, whether you know, what museums, what their actual role is and what the curator's role is?
Sa: Hmm. Yeah. So, sort of I was saying before, like I think the scope of the curator's role has gotten a lot broader. Um, and I think we're all very conscious of the fact that we're heading into a recession, um, jobs that were very competitive before COVID are going to be even tougher to get, uh, going forwards. Um, and so, you know, museums are going to be demanding much more from their curators and I reckon that's going to be more digital capability. Um, but also entrepreneurial thinking, which hasn't usually been the domain of the curator. And I think audiences are well aware now, like, like you were saying, Katie, of the pressure to focus on audience needs and particularly the needs of like a local or like hyper local audience. And that means being like proactive rather than reactive, going out there, talking to people, finding out how best to direct their services in a way that provides like actual measurable value to these local communities. So, you know, I see we were already heading this direction, but I see a much greater focus on like wellbeing, combating social isolation. Um, basically just taking the pressure off of other, you know, council services that will be facing cuts and in practice, this could mean curators are facilitating more like participatory or co-created projects, particularly with marginalized communities, but it could also be forging really thoughtful partnerships with organizations outside of the sector. So whatever way our energies are channelled, I think that after the lockdown, the curator really cannot ignore visitors and audiences anymore. They cannot just be looking after their objects. They have to be thinking about the experiences that they can facilitate for people at the museum, online, or anywhere else using their collection.
So just quickly before we wrap up, I was just wondering if you guys could flag up any really good articles or resources that you've come across just about curating or the role of the museum, um, during these times, because you know, I'm sure there's a lot of really switched on museum professionals who are giving their take right now. Don't know if you had any ideas on that Sian?
Si: Well, I mentioned the Citizen Curator program. It's kind of, I think it's done through the Curatorial Research Centre. I believe it's called, by Tehmina Goskar. And also I think we'd be remiss if we didn't kind of mention Cornwall Museum's Partnership as well. Um, but they are constantly sharing, um, really good resources and they're very, very encouraging and supportive about new and innovative ways that we can act. And we can, um, you know, projects that we can achieve through lockdown and post lockdown. So I would definitely check out those. And I think that we are quite lucky in some ways that our project, you know, our program as Trainee Curators even exists really. And they've been so on board with all the changes that lockdown brings. I don't know about Katie?
K: Yeah so at the Association of Independent Museums conference again, um, there was a lovely quote from, I don't know how you pronounce her name, Lucy Cassot the director of Museums and Galleries Scotland who said as the museum sector, we're all in the same storm, but we're in different boats. And that really brought it home to me that like we're all in COVID, we're all struggling with the same background problems, but each museum is going to have to deal with it in a different way, because sometimes it's going to be financial. Sometimes it's a physical space, that's too that's too small or whatever, whatever the situation might be. The other really good resource that I read at the start of lockdown was Andrea Jones, ‘Empathetic Audience Engagement During the Apocalypse’. It was a really wonderful article. It really brought home the emotional impact of COVID that everybody is going to be dealing with this in a different way. And as visitors, people might need distraction, they might need light-hearted things, they might want to grieve, or they might want to help. They might want to do practical charity work that makes them feel better, makes them feel like they're doing something and that you need to think about what all of those different groups might want and how you as a museum can kind of help them to fulfil those needs. What about you, Rachel? Have you found any, anything interesting online or…?
R: I listened to an interesting podcast called ‘The Future of Museums’ by Aspen UK, which centered on a discussion between Diane Lees, who is director of the Imperial War Museum and Tristram Hunt who’s director of the V&A. Although the discussion focused a bit more on the practicalities of museums emerging from lockdown, they did also discuss the digital side of things and how curators now have as much as a digital responsibility as a physical one to bring an object to life, and position it in the context of its existence. They also discussed some interesting topics like whether international loans will still be possible in the current climate and whether people will be so screen fatigued, that they will be desperate to reenter the physical space or conversely whether they will still have the capacity to connect to physical works of human creativity after so much digital engagement, which I think is going to be a really interesting tension for museums to negotiate. But Lizzie, have you come across any interesting resources that you could share?
L: Oh, I've been doing a lot of reading in lockdown, not so much relevant, I guess, to the current situation, but I've been reading books that have been kind of informing my practice in some way while I’m out of the gallery. So I've been reading books such as Playing to the Gallery by Grayson Perry, also got one called Who's museum? that's by James Cuno. That's about art museums and the public trust, which is a collection of essays that’s really interesting. And then I've got Experience or Interpretation by Nicholas Serota that’s another one. That's about the museums of modern art. So those are the books I'm currently reading. Really into art and curation, kind of changing ideas around how an art gallery, an art museum should be kind of curated and displayed.
Sa: You’ve been going old school Lizzie, reading physical books. [laughs] How refreshing!
R: Love it!
Sa: Yeah, I'm just gonna flag up a bit of fun, um, for us nerdy curator types. Art UK has launched a new digital ‘Curations’ platform, which means that you can use their entire,
Si: I saw it!
Sa: Yeah, it's so much fun. I spent a whole Friday night doing it cause I'm that sad.
[laughter}
Sa: Curating my own art exhibition online. It's a lot of fun. So I do recommend that, and ooh if we all, if we all make one, we can go visit each other's museums!
[Laughter]
Sa: All right, gang. This has been a really interesting chat I’m so glad we could all catch up.
R: Well, we're looking forward to chatting again for our next podcast recording and the theme for that one is going to be social history. So we'll be chatting about what social history actually is and what is its purpose.
Sa: See you soon guys!
ALL: Bye!
K: This podcast has been kindly supported by Cornwall Museum's Partnership, Cornwall Council, the John Ellerman Foundation, Cultivator, European Structural and Investment Funds and Arts Council England.
L: You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you find your podcasts.
R: Make sure you subscribe so you can be notified as soon as it's released.
Si: You can also follow us on Twitter @CornwallInterns all one word, to keep up to date on what we're doing in the museums around Cornwall. See you soon.