- Details
To the theatre in Hereford, to see Young Bloods' "The Canary Girls", about the munitions workers at the Rotherwas Munitions Factory in the first and second world wars. During World War I, 4000 women worked at the factory, packing explosives into shells. They had to do this by hand to reduce the likelihood of explosion, pressing the explosives into the shells with their thumbs, which caused painful skin damage. The picric acid made the workers' skin go yellow and caused liver disease.
Read more about it from the BBC here
These days, picric acid is used in fireworks because it makes a whistling noise as it burns in air.
- Details
o the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation in Essex, the waterway which took goods between Chelmsford and Heybridge Basin on the River Blackwater. If you look carefully behind the rushes on the photo on the left (, you will see some corrugated iron. This was brought back from the trenches in France after the end of the First World War, and was used to reinforce the sides of the waterway to prevent erosion. This is the last piece left on the waterway, between Paper Mill Lock and Little Baddow Mill.
- Details
The elephant is on stage! Or was, in 1830, at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. The Talented and Colossal Mademoiselle D'Jeck was on trial in Newcastle, having killed her keeper in Morpeth as he had treated her badly. She was found guilty and fined five shillings - a small sum, as she was earning £20 for each performance at the theatre.
November Club created a promenade performance, based on this true story, which took the audience into unseen parts of the theatre. I carried out the evaluation which showed that it had attracted a new audience, of all ages, to November Club's carefully-researched and quirky show.
- Details
Just back from Split in Croatia, where I delivered a day's training on visitor studies for ICOM Croatia, at the Mestrovic Galerija. We talked about how important it is to know who is (and isn't visiting) and what they think about the museum, so that more people will visit. The annual Museums Night visits in Split are extremely successful - but how to increase visitors during the rest of the year? How to encourage tourists to visit? How to encourage local people? The participants went away with plenty of ideas about how to deal with these challenges.
- On the border of Slovenia and Hungary
- Culture Matters
- Slovenia
- Repositories of technology
- A piece of Hungarian social history
- Museum + Heritage Show; Arts Professional
- Evaluation training in Slovenia and Croatia
- Iron Applause in Central Europe
- Escaped Circus Elephant!
- Gold from Afghanistan and Foundling fabrics
- The Old Herring Factory, Djúpavík
- Contemporary art from North Korea
- Nicola appointed to Board: Kuratórium
- Workshop in Hungary
- Evaluation Training in Hungary