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For #histday20 I’ve been thinking about new approaches to community history, and how to reach people when many can’t visit museums. I’m not sure online is the answer, too many people are left out, poor connectivity, cost of broadband and devices etc. How can we connect directly?
Back in April, I moved from my usual work in museums to helping run a call centre as part of the crisis response to the pandemic. It was immediately clear that a large section of the community in my region, don’t have access to the internet, though could get in touch by phone.
With libraries closed, there were no opportunities for getting online for many people. My museum service, like many, put together a lot of online content while our buildings were closed. A lot of this used new ideas and seemed very attractive. But the overall reach was low.
As was clear to me at the crisis call centre, a large section of the community isn’t online. Then many people who would visit a museum in person, weren’t necessarily looking at our websites or social media.
Even our dedicated followers were lost among an overwhelming amount of output from museum staff now working at home.
Plans began to re-open the museums as soon as safely possible, everyone wanted to get back to those personal connections and as we’ve known for a long time, people want to see the “real”, original artefacts, atmospheric locations, chance to talk to enthusiastic guides in person.
While museums were closed, a former colleague of mine did something to connect with his community which really inspired me. At the VE Day weekend, he set up an outdoor museum on the road outside his house, with original WW2 artefacts, and he dressed in Home Guard uniform too.
If we couldn’t have indoor museums, why not outdoors? As we in museums compared notes for re-opening, some of the best ideas came from volunteer run sites putting on similar small displays outdoors.
In my local community, I have run history and story walks in the past, helping people discover their local area, including historic buildings and ancient monuments. These had been very popular, but for now, we couldn’t have such gatherings.
Then I had a thought, everyone was still out walking anyway for daily exercise. Our community notice boards were sitting unused, with faded posters of old events and no more planned.
So I gathered old images, wrote a short history of the village and re-purposed a notice board as a home-made interpretation panel.
This was such a simple idea, and I wished I’d thought of it earlier. But it worked, people were stopping to look, even talking about it elsewhere in the village, and then neighbours started to come forward with interesting photos, older scenes and more recent too, like this one.
I’d already thought about how to represent the character and history of local areas and had put together some films to share online based on the collections in @DumfriesMuseum connected with various parishes.
But these had only limited reach, due to the problems I’ve already mentioned, so it seemed a good idea would be to convert the content into more low-tech information boards in those communities. Here’s the board outside Holywood Village Hall.
The idea was spreading, here’s some put together by a local high school student in the next village along the river from us. Apologies for not having taken a photo when it was first put up, so now the paper and print is past its best but a good reminder to laminate for longevity.
During the lockdown, the local area outdoors became the museum I visited. Seeing the built heritage of my community with new eyes, and the graveyards were packed full of stories and wonderful examples of the stonemason’s craft.
For those who could get online, there were some fantastic examples being shared on social media. In my local area @MostlyGhostly_ regularly showed some wonderful images to encourage us back out there.
Our museums re-opened back in September, and it has been great to get back to doing what I feel I do best, welcoming visitors and sharing local history with them. But I don’t want to lose that connection with my immediate local area, and hope to continue that interpretation.
Here’s to the days when I can once again put posters up in those notice boards advertising a history day in the village hall, or more heritage walks around our local area.
