A sure-fire way to cure Christmas boredom!

Hello All

A final message from Shed HQ for the year and just to let you know that THe Shed is very much open over Christmas (with the exception for Christmas day, Boxing day and New Year's day) and there is plenty to see and do.

Today we've installed the Video Shed back in the gallery and set up a screen for you to record your own videos.  We're asking 'What object sums up Carlisle now?'  As some of you may know, there's an exhibition in the summer called Carlisle in 10 Objects and we want everyone's thoughts about an object that can represent Carlisle in the present and into the future to put into the display.  So your chosen object may well end up in the exhibition!

Also, there's still time to book onto the Make a Festive Exhibtion of Yourself workshop on Sunday 28th December.  Call Reception on 01228 618781 so that you can see your festive objects and stories on dispay in the museum!  The first workshop was on Sunday and was a great success - you can still see the results of their work if you visit the Shed in the next week.  Check out the Evening News and Star today (Tuesday 23 December) for some pictures of the workshop.

If you don't have the opportunity to take part in this way, then you can see what other people have been up to and maybe leave a Christmassy drawing on the drawing wall.

And, we still have our glimpse into the Tullie House stores with objects on display that haven't ever been publically shown or been out for a long time.

Thank you everyone who has visited the Shed, left a comment or particpated in a workshop this year.  We've plenty more planned for the New Year so I hope to see you all again soon.  If you'd like to share your comments with me about the space then I'm happy to receive them at enquiries@tulliehouse.org

Have a very merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Claire

Help Tullie get festive!

We need your help to get Tullie ready for Christmas.  Our guest blogger Geoff tells you how you can put your own fesitive exhibition in THe Shed.

Our tree's looking a little bare so we need you help!

Making a Festive Exhibition of Yourself, 16th December 2014 - 4th January 2015

With Christmas literally on our doorstep and schools on the verge of breaking up for the festive period, this time is always important for museums such as Tullie House. Families are often looking for things do both before and after Christmas Day itself. So with this and our Shed exhibition project in mind, a family exhibition about Christmas seems an excellent fit.

When planning any activities, families or otherwise, it is important to consider engagement. This can vary depending upon the audience you are catering for and with families, interaction and the provision of fun things to do is paramount. Families often like interaction where they get involved and afterwards, a legacy for their work is often a great means for each family to look back at the activity and say “We did that!!!” Additionally, when working with families, we must think of the children, but also toddlers, teens and of course adults, whether they be parents or grandparents. Any combination of these people can form a visiting family. It’s therefore important that we try and engage with all family members with each group. It’s not always an easy task.

So our Christmas exhibition will allow families to work together to produce something, in this case an exhibition, that they can take pride in. This will be done through a series of family workshops, one for our Tullie Toddler group, the other two for visiting families over the Christmas School Holidays. The families will also have the opportunity of displaying their own Christmas objects. These could range from old presents, decorations or a turkey roasting tin!!! Whatever they choose, we’re hoping there are stories linked to the objects; each family will have the opportunity to share those stories not only with each other in the workshops, but also on the labels they create about their own objects. Stories are something we can all relate to and families are often full of them.

For other families visiting in between the workshops, they can also contribute by adding Christmas artworks to our exhibition banner. As with the workshops, we’ll ask them to draw something important to them and to tell us why that object is so special to them.

In taking part in these activities we’re hoping to give the families a great opportunity to find out some behind the scenes tips and secrets about how we put on an exhibition, whilst at the same time, giving them a fun family visit to Tullie House.

If you would like to book a place on one of the family workshops, call us now on (01228) 618700. We look forward to seeing you.

Job well done!

Enjoying the special view of the exhibition.

Guest blogger Mary, Project Co-ordinator of Treasures of Cumbria, tells us about the latest exciting milestone from her Cumbria-wide projects.

On Friday 5 December volunteers travelled from as far as Barrow-in-Furness for a special view of the One day in Cumbria exhibition at Tullie House.

After enjoying scones, cake, tea and coffee, the volunteer researchers were thanked by Director Hilary Wade for the special contribution they made to the project. She acknowledged that without their skill and enthusiasm, the exhibition would not have been possible. Hilary also thanked Cumbria County Council archives and libraries and partner museums, Lakeland Arts, the Dock Museum, Penrith and Eden Museum, Beacon Museum and the Haig Pit Mining Museum for their support.

The group made their way up to the exhibition and admired the timeline and items from the collection. They filled out their own updates of what they’d done on 5 December 2014 for inclusion on the contemporary timeline.

Both the 1914 and 2014 timelines are now on show.

Project coordinators Mary Ann Lancaster and Stuart Appley said a few words in the exhibition, sharing what an enjoyable experience it had been to work with such talented participants.

There was also an opportunity to attend a first screening in the Lecture Theatre of Your Country Needs You, a film created for the project by Comely Media. This film responds to research into life in 1914, and follows one man in Dalton-in-Furness as he struggles to decide whether to enlist.

The event was a lot of fun, with many people enquiring when we’ll be getting started on A day in 1915!

There are only 4 days remaining of the exhibition, which now features both the 1914 and 2014 timelines. The project will be published online at http://onedayincumbria.org.uk later this week.

The results are in...

How many of you voted for the Roman object to be included in Tullie's big summer exhibition 'Carlisle in 10 Objects'?  The results are in and are shared by Tim, our Curator of Archaeology, below:

Roman Altar Represents Romans in Summer Exhibition

As part of the preparation for next summer's exhibition which will illustrate the history of the city in 10 objects, one of the first projects in THe Shed was to ask our visitors to decide which object from our large Roman collection sums up the impact of the Romans on Carlisle.

Each object was chosen to illustrate an aspect of life that was introduced by the Romans when they arrived. Six ideas were selected and information about them, along with a picture of the object that would be in the exhibition. These were made into posters and put up on the wall in THe Shed. Voting papers were supplied along with an authentic ballot box. Visitors were asked to vote for their favourite. The voting period was between October 20 and November 10.

A big 'Thank You' to all who voted. Here are the results:

Altar to Mars Barrex

As can be seen, writing was seen by nearly a third of the voters as the most important thing the Romans introduced into Carlisle. This means that the altar dedicated to Mars Barrex that was found in English Street, Carlisle in 1861 is the object that will represent what the Romans did for Carlisle next summer.

If you didn't get to vote on this one, don't worry, there'll be another opportunity to have your say in what will be shown in the Carlisle in 10 Objects exhibitions very soon.  Watch this space!

Claire

One Day in Cumbria is ready to go

Guest blogger Helen tells you about this exciting take on the space.  If you keep reading to the bottom, there's a way we can all get involved and make a bit of history:

One Day in Cumbria is the latest temporary exhibition to appear in the Shed at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle.  Installation started earlier this week, where project co-ordinator Mary Ferguson unpacked the new panels and timeline banner, and organised the space ready for the new displays.  

The One Day in Cumbria project marks the Centenary of the First World War.  It has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s First World War: then and now programme, and centres on research into daily life and industry in 1914.   People around Cumbria are invited to help make history on 5 December this year by sharing their updates about life on the same day in 2014, and the final results will be shown on an interactive timeline, at http://onedayincumbria.org.uk comparing and highlighting changes in the county 100 years apart.

The current exhibition at Tullie House forms just part of the One Day in Cumbria project, by displaying the research that the volunteers have been working on since October.  The Shed gallery space also provides a place for visitors to ask questions, find out more and to take part too.    

The One Day in Cumbria volunteer researchers have visited museums, libraries and archives across the county and discovered a wealth of information about life in the area that is now Cumbria.  From tales of fundraising in local schools to stories of Belgian refugees fleeing a devastated homeland to settle in temporary homes, the project highlights the way that local people supported the war effort, each other and those most in need in the early days of the war.

The First World War broke out in August 1914. By December that year, people at home were beginning to feel the effects of the war. But much of life continued as normal. No-one could predict, at this time, how long the war would last and how many lives it would claim.

Do we prepare for and celebrate Christmas in the same ways now as people did then? Is sport just as important or does it play an even bigger part in out lives? Do we still know our neighbours the way people did 100 years ago?  We’d like you to get involved in this exciting experiment.  Submit your story through the http://onedayincumbria.org.uk website or by using the #onedayincumbria hashtag on Facebook or Twitter.

The Exhibition runs from 25 November to 13 December 2014

On 11 December, the Consortium will publish two 24-hour timelines of life in Cumbria. One will chart life on 5 December 1914 and the other the same day, 100 years later. Help make history.

Up and running

It's been an eventful week in THe Shed.

After the slight chaos of Half Term where the volume of people meant lots of people saw and enjoyed the What's in Store space, it also meant that wolf received way more strokes than it should have (the museums constant battle - preservation versus access) we were in need of the slightly calmer events of this week.  It started last Thursday evening where the space played host to its first evening event, a very well attended opening for the Remembrance 100 project, where over 80 pupils, their parents and teachers from Trinity School came along.  I've shared a few of the photos below.

Following on from this there was a lovely piece in the Evening News and Star on Tuesday 11th.





Also this week the vote for the Roman object closed.  The winner will be featured in next summer's show Carlisle in 10 Objects and we are collating the results as we speak - the name of the winning object will appear here next week.

As the voting ended it was replaced by a brand new photography exhibition 'I remember when...' This new show in the Work in Progress space is part of the Raw Talent series.  It's presenting a series of works by young people responding to a brief by The Image Unit for the Carlisle Photography Festival.  Their challenge was to take a single photograph with their mobile phone that finished the question ‘I remember when...’  The results are remarkable.  The festival may have finished but you can see these works on show until 30 November.

Remembrance 100 opens in THe Shed

The first of our series of seven exhibitions opens in THe Shed tomorrow.  The co-curator of Remembrance 100 Mark Gibbs is our guest blogger today who shares his expereince of creating an exhibit from such thought-provoking subject matter.

Remembrance 100   6 Nov- 23 Nov

A big part of my job is to build connections between schools and Tullie House, so I’m delighted with how Remembrance 100 has turned out. It’s a show in Tullie’s new experimental Shed space, where we try to do displays differently. The project is a partnership between the Museum and Trinity School in Carlisle. It combines student artwork, powerful artefacts, a web based archive and an interactive peace wall.  Continuing the theme of collaboration, I’ve enjoyed working closely with the Curator of Social History Edwin Rutherford.

The background to the show comes from Tullie’s interest in marking the 100^th anniversary of the War’s outbreak, and the research two Trinity teachers carried out.  Trinity’s Head of History, Linda Hodgson and maths teacher Sarah Lee-Adamson researched the service history of the school’s old boys who were killed in the First World War. Through this they found three names not recorded on the school’s memorial plaque, and so these were added in a dedication service led by the Bishop of Carlisle this October. Their research is recorded in Trinity’s Memorial website, which visitors can access in the show or at home. The school’s year 9 (13-14 year olds) were then asked to design an image to use for the invitations to the event.  

Eloise helping out

Remembrance 100 combines this display of 100 of these student artworks with artefacts from our collections, including a set of letters from Lance Corporal Joseph Hall, who was killed in action at Arras in 1917. We have his last letter home, family photograph and death notification telegram.  This is powerful stuff which made a big impact on the group of eight Trinity students who came over to design the labels and information boards: ‘Our first impressions were indescribable’ said one student pair.  That’s where the innovation comes in.  One group of students designed most of the text in the show and a second group of six students came over to install the show - Museum Assistant Eloise Stott helped us to put the display up making sure everything was level – no mean feat with 100 small artworks!

So Remembrance 100 is a jointly curated show, with student artworks, powerful stories,

and the Memorial website providing a digital element. There’s also an interactive part; a peace wall where visitors are encouraged to think how we can all promote peace, and post that thought on the wall. Suggesting perhaps that Remembrance can be active, and continuing the interest that Tullie has already shown in conflict resolution with the Living Wall display, in the Roman Frontier Gallery (this reminds viewers that border walls are still very much part of our world). It also connects with the debate on the ethics of war themed toys in our current Wargames show.

A short documentary film will provide a permanent record of the show.

Filmaker Paddy preparing for the big shot

Mark Gibbs

Secondary and post 16 Learning Officer

Tullie House

THe Shed is now open!

It's been a few weeks...We've all been busy pulling everything for THe Shed together and we've done it!

I've included some pictures of the installation so you get a little idea of how it all developed over the past two weeks.

Now that it's open we can really get started and bring the project to life and see how everyone reacts and interacts with the space.  For over a year it's been a project on paper and spreadsheets, so to now to have new structures built and some more of our wonderful objects out on display is super exciting and also a little bit of a relief.  

So, if you come along to Tullie House for THe Shed what can you see?   What's in store?  is one quarter of the space that has objects from our collections that are not often seen, displayed in our Cabinet of Curiosties and in the 'Store room'.

The second quarter is taken up with Work in Progress.  Here you can vote on which Roman object will be featured in next Summer's big exhibition at Tullie and win a prize to boot!

The final half is for New projects, which for half-term has games and the Video Shed to record and star in your own masterpeice that we might be able to feature on our screen in the gallery.

There's bound to be something here that interests you so please come along.  All welcome!

To sign off I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who helped put it all together and give you an introduction to the Shed team (some of whom will be featuring more in the coming months):

In alphabetical order:

Andy W; Anna S; Amy W; Catherine M L; Cassie S; Claire B; Claire W; Edwin R; Eloise S; Fiona C; Geoffrey M; Gill G; Jill G; Ian E; Joanne H; Marian J, Mark G; Mary F; Melanie G; Michael S; Michelle W; Steve H; Tim P.

Thanks!

Claire S

What is THe Shed?

THe Shed came out of a convergence of two ideas: the want to find new ways of using our temporary exhibitions space and exploring how Tullie House can develop in the future.   Working with my (now erstwhile) colleague Marian, we put together a plan for a space that would provide the opportunity to test out new ideas and new ways of working.  THe Shed was born.

It wasn’t always called THe Shed.  If you were in the museum earlier in the summer you might have seen the display asking for your votes and suggestions for a new name (thank you so much if you took part).   We decided on THe Shed as we felt it summed up so much of what we wanted the project to be about.  We had this idea that sheds are utilitarian but purposeful.   Somewhere you can try out your latest ideas or germinate seeds, store some of your bits and pieces and maybe somewhere to go to get a bit of peace and have a think.  Oh, and the capitalised TH is for Tullie House.  How does this translate into an exhibitions space?  You’ll be able to find out in a few weeks!

Welcome to THe Shed

We're taking over the temporary exhibitions gallery in Tullie House to try out new ways of using the space and explore our collections.  There's an exciting programme planned, but new smaller features will continue to be programmed so keep in touch via this page or #THShed.

Here's what's coming up:

The first day is Saturday 25 October.  See you there!