Have you ever looked down when you’re walking about outside (do you walk about much)? We’re often encouraged to look up when we’re in the middle of towns and cities to admire the architecture of urbanisation above the modern, slightly jarring, signage of our high street shops. But do you look down? Local foundries made [...]
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Artistic licence: misrepresenting (Cornish) history
Last week the temperature under my collar was raised twice over. Both times it concerned a poor representation of the past. One probably down to lazy journalism (but with no real excuses) and the other possibly down to poor editing choices and an over-reliance on a ‘pat narrative’. Here I discuss the first of these, [...]
Paddington history for kids
Last November I blogged about my experience demonstrating the wonders of history school children at Hallfield Primary School, my first alma mater. I continued the theme with the local Cub Scouts Group based at another Paddington primary school, St Mary Magdalene (5th Paddington). My tack was slightly different here. The incentive to listen and learn [...]
Where is Asturias, food and promoting living heritage
Within ‘the heritage sector’ we compartmentalise its different aspects. Museums, libraries, archives as guardians and interpreters of collections. The historic environment sector as recorders of the built environment and historic landscapes. Archaeologists who excavate, record and analyse material remains. Then there’s natural heritage, everything about our world that isn’t human made. The subject divisions proliferate [...]
When did William the Conqueror burst? Or Back to School History
This afternoon was spent back at my old Primary School. The chairs and tables have shrunk but everything else is pretty much the same. That more or less is what the study of history is like. We look for things that changed and can’t help but notice what hasn’t. The reason I found myself faced [...]
The Science of Noah's Ark
After ages, a meaty debate has been developing on the Group for Education in Museums Jiscmail list. It centred around an initial post by Richard Ellam on the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (CLOtC) decision to award their quality badge to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm. On balance the response from list members has been [...]
Textile Conservation Centre finds a new home in Glasgow
Clearly much continued to happen behind the scenes by the TCC Foundation before and since its closure in Winchester. A press release was made last week announcing a new home in Glasgow for many of its activities, particularly in research and education. I have taken the liberty of reproducing the press release in full below: [...]
New Portable Antiquities Scheme website and database
After a year in development, the new Portable Antiquities Scheme website and database is now live. The Scheme’s database holds over 500,000 records and about 250,000 photos. These records are contributed by staff, volunteers and the general public. The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the [...]
Textile Conservation Centre continues online
Following the closure of the Textile Conservation Centre, until recently, part of the University of Southampton, the staff of the TCC and the TCC Foundation have set up a website to keep people in touch and retain a presence in the world of conservation, culture and heritage. Here, you can also keep in touch with [...]
National Portrait Gallery / Wikimedia
This is a quick response to a very good and pleasantly short blog post on Open Objects regarding the conflict caused by Wikimedia scraping high resolution ‘zoomified’ images from the NPG’s website and making them available. I concur with your thoughts. I don’t think Wikimedia is, however, anything other than extremely naive not to have [...]