Chatting Behind the Lines - Curator's tales and musings

  How many of us have woken this morning in a slight confusion about the actual time? How many times during the day will we say 'well last week it would have been dark at this time!'  Once again we have undertaken our bi-yearly ritual and adjusted our clocks. ('spring forward' - thank goodness for a trusty saying to help me remember which way the clocks move!) No doubt I will spend the next 24 hours out of sorts, then slightly downhearted when I feel someone has taken an hour of today from me. But come next week with the lighter evenings, I will have adjusted my body clock and will be looking forward to summer. This made me start thinking about how over the last year 'time' has become so important to all of us. With lockdowns and restrictions, we have counted the days until we can get back to some sort of normality. It is now only 7 weeks until we can welcome back visitors to the Museum, for instance. Of course, the main part of our collections charts the histor...

Like other households in the country, I have just completed my census return. Required to complete a return every ten years, the census collects information to give us a complete picture of the nation. ' The census provides information that government needs to develop policies, plan and run public services, and allocate funding' according to the census 2021 website. A series of questions identified my address, occupation and who is actually in the house today. Of course collecting information across the nation is not new. In 1086, William the Conqueror carried out a detailed inventory of land and property across much of England and Wales. This was a massive undertaking at the time and took many years to complete, but provided information to help with taxation. Interestingly, at the time of the survey, Carlisle was part of Scotland and therefore not included.  Information has been collected from 1086 but the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the increase in population, led ...

Looking after a military collection conjures images of weapons, uniforms and medals. Don't get me wrong, we do have these items in our collections but our collections are much more than this. They get behind the object and show the people behind the objects. The human story. Part of this human story is the soldier's family. It seemed appropriate today on Mother's Day to highlight this. Mother's looked after the children, ensuring that there was some form of normality in a lifestyle that often saw them regularly moving house or living in some out-flung station of the World. Mothers coped with tropical diseases, settling their children into new schools, providing a home and safe space for their families.  The illustrations incorporated into this blog highlight the differences. The black and white photograph shows two Border Regiment soldiers plus a mother and her children in China in 1927. The snapshot from the primitive painting shows Martha Dollery, with her husband and...

During lockdown Museums are always looking for inventive ways to engage with their audiences. Over the last 12 months we have come to appreciate the benefit of regular social media to interact with people out there in virtual-land. Museums regularly communicate and talk to each other to look for opportunities to work together to promote the heritage sector. During November last year, a group of North Cumbrian Museums trialed using the hashtag #MyLocalMuseum, posting daily for a week to remind people of their local heritage. When reviewing the week of activity, we decided to contact other Cumbrian Museums and expand the initiative. With lockdown3, the idea was eagerly accepted by other Cumbrian cultural venues and a plan was put into place. This time things were slightly different. We chose to focus on a set theme each week, and just on one day, with all participants using the hashtags #MyLocalMuseum and #CumbrianMuseums. Themes were agreed beforehand and allocated to specific weeks. We...