Using Heritage to Understand the Past

Sometimes social media brings back some great memories. Today was such a day when I was sent a wee photograph from a Museum project which I worked on nine years ago. It was one of those activities in your working life which you are incredibly proud of. More so, as I am still in contact with the majority of the participants who have gone on to do such amazing things.

You may look at this photo and wonder what it has got to do with Museums. This was the early stage of a HLF Young Roots funded project working with the newly established young peoples' group at Tullie House. Nicknamed 'YakYak' the group had decided to support the opening of the new Roman Frontier Gallery with a project that enabled them to explore the Roman history of their locality, and walk Hadrian's Wall. An idea was born and developed.

Obviously, a group of teenagers undertaking a vast project like this needed a bit of planning...and sometimes a reality check. We decided to find out more about the Romans by undertaking a variety of activities before we actually walked the wall. This included looking at walls and how they were constructed so a day course in dry stone walling was suggested. Finding an instructor was easy, finding a wall was more problematic, even with the help of local farmers! Eventually, a member of staff who had stone walls on her property offered to help us out. Then we had the huge task of finding a suitable date which should have been easy. However, these were teenagers and we had the whole exams situation to consider. When we finally secured the date, some of the young people had to drop out due to revision and homework. So that left myself, my colleague John, and Simon and Tom from the YakYak group.

Picture this. A grey and windy day in May in the Eden Valley, and four complete novices who didn't know their face stones from their footings. We were split into two teams, I was partnered with Tom, a local lad from Carlisle. Over the course of the day we shifted stone, learnt about wall construction, were tested on our wall vocabulary and proudly put together a piece of  a field boundary wall. The sense of achievement by all four of us is evident in this photo. It was a fantastic day and I loved it.

So imagine the surprise this morning when Tom sent me this photograph. It was  lovely to hear from him and check that everything is okay. Tom now lives in Chester. He opted not to go to University but instead went down another route. As he put in the comments under the photograph this morning 'Start of my masonry journey!' Because now Tom is a master stone mason and being involved in this Museum project helped put him on this journey. And this is one of the reasons I love my work in the heritage sector, as I can see how it can have an impact on people.  #proud

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