Behind the Scenes at the Oxford University Museums

Theodore Koterwas, Mobile Development Team Lead, IT Services, gives a short talk for Oxford University Museums Staff Conference Based in IT Services, Ted and the Mobile Development Team have worked with the museums on half a dozen apps and mobile resources for the visiting public. Ted shares some of the innovative products developed, and share lessons learned.

Beth Asbury, Assistant to the Director and Administration Team, Pitt Rivers Museum, gives a short talk for Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Beth shares an Oxford University Museums Partnership Innovation Fund project to create a printed trail across the collections providing new perspectives on some of their objects written by volunteers from Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. This is a response to a lecture by Professor Richard Parkinson of the Oriental Institute calling for more explicit, not implicit, representations of the LGBTQ+ experience in all museums.

Daniel Bone, Deputy Head of Conservation, Ashmolean Museum, gives a short talk for Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Daniel outlines the work of a recent Oxford University Museums Partnership Innovation Fund project setting up vibration monitoring in showcases at the Ashmolean. The project is in collaboration with Professor Manolis Chatzis, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.

Stephen Barker, Oxfordshire County Council Museums Service, gives a short talk for Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. For the current Oxford University Museums Partnership funded 'Oxfordshire in 50 Objects' exhibition produced by Oxfordshire Museums Services, community partners were asked to choose the artefacts. This presentation highlights two chosen artefacts, why they were chosen and how visitors interact with them.

Mark Carnall, Collections Manager (Life Collections), Museum of Natural History gives a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Mark shares his experiences from his first year working in the museum managing the zoology collections, all the teaching, research and other stuff – including the whacky enquiries! Mark shares the surprises and the rewards he’s encountered since joining the Oxford team.

Helen Fountain, Reminiscence Officer, Oxford University Museums and Kate Hamblin, Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford Institute for Population Ageing give a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. In 2015 the University of Oxford Institute for Population Ageing made a successful application to the Fell Fund to explore the impact of the Museum of Oxford’s Memory Lane on site reminiscence group on its participants’ wellbeing. This short talk covers the collaborative process from early discussions, developing a seminar series, the research process and the final research findings which have been published in a report.

Beth McDougall and Madeleine Ding, VERVE Team, Pitt Rivers Museum give a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. The VERVE project is a £1.6m, 5 year campaign to conserve and deepen understanding of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s displays, inspiring a significant programme of public engagement. In this talk the team share three VERVE initiatives that aim to create deep public engagement: ‘Meet me at the Museum’, aimed at older people; ‘Pitt Fest’, an annual outdoor celebration; and ‘Museum Takeovers’, which allow young adults to take over the museum.

Sarah Lloyd and Carly Smith-Huggins, Education Officers, Museum of Natural History give a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Education staff from across the museums have been exploring new models for engaging young people and working with them to shape the museums’ offer, under the umbrella of a shared youth forum project. Representatives from the team share learning from the different approaches, and highlight the infectious enthusiasm of young people that have chosen to be in the museums in their free time.

Giovanna Vitelli, Director, University Engagement Programme, Ashmolean Museum gives a short talk for Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Giovanna talks about the Cabinet project, funded by the university’s IT Innovation Fund, which is building an online platform to integrate museum objects into the traditional text-based curricula of a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Nicola Bird, Community Engagement Officer, Oxford University Museums gives a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Nicola discusses how the community engagement team uses the museums and collections to support such services as prisons, probation services, refugee groups, homeless charities, hospitals and mental health charities. She shares how they work with different departments across the museums to make the collections relevant to people’s lives and place them at the heart of the local community.

Marie-Louise Kerr, Penicillin Exhibition Curator, Museum of the History of Science gives a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Marie-Louise talk' about 'Back from the Dead', the Museum of the History of Science's new exhibition opening in November, which explores the history of penicillin in Oxford. She focuses on how the museum's collection and exhibition are being used to support modern university research.

Andrew Hughes, Move Project Team Leader, Pitt Rivers Museum, gives a short talk for the Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. Andrew talks about how a dedicated project team are documenting, photographing, packing and tracking the move of 120,000 objects from the Old Power Station Store, where they have been housed for over 40 years. This is not only a transportation project, but a transformation project, improving access to collections not on display and informing new strategic approaches from display, to conservation, to online collections.

Scott Billings, Digital Engagement Officer, Museum of Natural History gives a short talk for Oxford University Museums Staff Conference. The Dodo Roadshow was a crazy tip-to-tip trip across Britain with one of natural history’s most iconic specimens. Scott talks about how the idea was developed from an initial suggestion around the director’s table to their arrival in John O’Groats barely one month later, having visited collections in 22 museums and galleries along the way.