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Elly (left) and Cloris (right) next to their exhibition at Walton Library, September 2024.
We are Elly and Cloris, and we’re studying MA Art Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of Leicester.
We recently worked at Elmbridge Museum from July to September 2024 for our summer placement, which makes up the final part of our Masters course.
In the placement, we were responsible for both exhibitions and collections management work. These two aspects of real-life museum practice were completely new to us.
In this blogpost, we reflect on our placement and give a behind the scenes look at some of the projects we worked on!
Elly and Cloris looking through boxes of items at the Museum store.
For the exhibition part of the placement, we started from scratch by searching for a theme we were interested in and that fitted the target audience of the display venue. We then had to develop this into a feasible physical and online exhibition plan.
We found that the theme of ‘food’ is something that often came up in our conversations, and as non-locals coming to Elmbridge, food was really how we got to know the local area and its culture.
Although some previous exhibitions had already shone a spotlight on the history of local shops and advertisements, food in and of itself hadn’t been covered as a main focus – yet there were plenty of examples of historic food in the collection.
Explore local shops in the Historic High Streets online exhibitionTo find support for our theme, we started exploring the collections and archives. The biggest challenges were to strike a good balance between the items in the physical display and online exhibition, and to tell rounded stories using the objects at our disposal.
We overcame these challenges through our research in the local studies room, and by considering how to engage more people in the borough in our exhibition. We wanted to bring a new approach to the exhibition, so we decided to use our non-local perspective when writing our interpretation. We believed that certain objects could resonate with people’s memories and help them to relate to Elmbridge’s local history, whether they were from the local area or not. For example, the jelly mould we chose to put in the physical exhibition resonated with our own childhood memories in Hong Kong, even though it is a part of Elmbridge’s history. This could help the exhibition to appeal to wider audiences.
In order to engage with a diverse audience and encourage audience interaction, we designed a couple of activities for both the physical and online exhibition. We designed and drew activity worksheets which physical exhibition audiences could easily access.
Additionally, we made a video featuring past and present kitchenware for the online exhibition. We hope this video can also create fun and fresh way of providing visual information about the exhibition on social media, to draw a wider attention from younger people.
Elly and Cloris auditing items in the Museum store.
Apart from exhibition planning, the Museum offered us an opportunity to join the collections project to assist in auditing, in advance of the future Museum store move. This gave us the chance to engage closely with the Museum collections of various categories and materials.
This hands-on practice not only helped us to learn about collections management, but also inspired us, revealing the way you can read objects from multiple angles to discover their hidden significance and potential.
The whole experience of working at Elmbridge Museum was fun and inspiring, even when we encountered challenges during the process. Each member of the team shows passion in their individual work. At the same time, there is strong teamwork, trust and care within the team. This motivated us a lot, and we felt deeply engaged being part of the team, working towards improvements together.
Sitting on Concorde as part of the team visit to Brooklands Museum in September 2024.
We appreciated so much that the team arranged a visit to Brooklands Museum in the last week of our placement.
It was more than a staff and volunteers guided visit, but a friendly occasion where two museums could exchange their ideas. Brooklands staff members shared what the ideas behind their variety of installations and galleries were. They also gave us an overview of their engagement activities, which was great.
Through this visit, we realised that there is real value in different museums exchanging ideas and collaborating with each other.
This was a fruitful placement experience for both of us. We had great opportunities to present our ideas towards exhibition planning, installation, and engagement activity design. The encouragement of the Museum team gave us the confidence to implement our ideas into creating a real exhibition, equipping us with practical skills that will benefit our career development.
