{"id":7403,"date":"2017-05-12T15:10:16","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T14:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=7403"},"modified":"2020-09-04T15:55:12","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T14:55:12","slug":"natural-sciences-collections-association-comes-to-cambridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/2017\/05\/12\/natural-sciences-collections-association-comes-to-cambridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Sciences Collections Association comes to Cambridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Whale, the Dire Rhea and the Boar\u2019s New Nose\u2026 just some of the acquaintances I made at last month\u2019s Natural Science Collections Association Annual Conference<\/a>.\u00a0 Full of passionate and inspiring museum folk, as well as curious and intriguing animals, Evolving Ideas: provocative new ways of working with collections<\/em> showcased a swarm of ways of using biological, geological, botanical collections to engage visitors and to share, document and care for collections.<\/h2>\n

Hosted this year by our very own Museum of Zoology<\/a>, more than 200 members of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) herded in Cambridge for two days of talks, discussions, and more than a bit of laughter.\u00a0 The occasion also provided the opportunity for delegates to admire the amazing new Whale Hall at the Museum of Zoology, and take a peek behind the scenes before the museum reopens after a multi-million pound redevelopment later in the summer.<\/p>\n

Here are just a few of my highlights from the two days \u2013 I\u2019m sure others will have more<\/p>\n

Ian Trumble (Bolton Library & Museum Service) outlined how a highly successful family exhibition involving taxidermy specimens dressed as storybook characters (think Jemima Puddleduck and Fantastic Mr Fox) transformed Bolton Museum\u2019s public profile. The tension between dressing taxidermy – generally frowned upon by curators\u00a0 – and the enormous public and local political support that the exhibition generated made for some excellent ongoing discussion about good practice, guidelines and how we set priorities for our museums.<\/p>\n

Subhadra Das (UCL Culture) and Miranda Lowe (Natural History Museum) held the room to attention with their powerful challenge to us to stop glossing over the social context of our natural science collections.\u00a0 By positioning our natural science collections at the \u2018hard\u2019 end of science we often fail to acknowledge the social context in which these objects were collected, in particular the role of race and class.\u00a0 They urged us to value the process of science as much as the content, to bring the challenging histories of our objects into the mainstream, and in doing so render our museums more welcoming and accessible.<\/p>\n

Manchester Museum\u2019s recent experimental approach to environmental campaigning, a conscious decision by the museum to step beyond just informing debate about environmental issues, was described inspiringly by genial tub-thumper David Gelsthorpe. The Climate Control exhibition (#MMClimateControl) used the Museum\u2019s local collections and a striking design to explore both the past and future of climate change.\u00a0 An impressive social media campaign invited people to pledge their commitment to combatting climate change, while student volunteering and an empowered visitor services team created far-reaching impacts on audiences.<\/p>\n

Fabulous fly-woman Erica McAlister (\u00a0<\/a>Natural History Museum) highlighted the exciting research potential of some jaw-dropping analytical techniques which enable us to study and understand the animals in our collections without the need for destructive sampling of specimens. These include 3D visualization of internal anatomy, and the sequencing of the entire DNA genome in historic museum specimens.<\/p>\n

Finally, I really enjoyed hearing from Luke Blazejewski describing the activist practice research he is leading with Manchester Museum and others in the North West connecting older people nature through natural heritage collections.\u00a0 More commonly, museums engage with older people through history, memory and reminiscence; this approach enables older people to think about the future as much as the past.\u00a0 With a clear focus on responding to society\u2019s needs rather than our own, this project has parallels with the University of Cambridge Museum\u2019s own work with older people led by the Fitzwilliam Museum, which provides opportunities for them to engage with collections right across the consortium.<\/p>\n

My own presentation focused on how the University of Cambridge Museums engages audiences across disciplines, using case studies to show how we engage audiences through frameworks such as Arts Award and Creative Apprenticeships, which have originally been developed within an arts context.\u00a0 Natural science is a key part of the University of Cambridge Museum\u2019s multidisciplinary offer, and we put emphasis on connections that can be made between the different museum collections.\u00a0 Research indicates that many visitors, families in particular, find natural science collections more accessible.\u00a0 Hence, multidisciplinary programmes can build confidence among audiences to engage with a broader range of museums and collections, they enable us to put our science collections in their social context, and to broaden engagement with our collections.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> Back to gallery<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n

NatSCA is one of the friendliest and most relaxed sector conferences.\u00a0 Where else do people tweet pictures of their own #NatSciFashion<\/a>, where there\u2019s an ongoing conference bingo and where the entire room can give a spontaneous cheer and round of applause to the hard-pressed Museum of Zoology team as they share some of the ups and downs of their ongoing redevelopment project?\u00a0 And while there was loads to satisfy my inner palaeontological nerd, much of the conference was of great relevance to the wider museums\u2019 sector; look out for the conference volume to be published by NatSCA later in the year.<\/p>\n

You can find out more about NatSCA on their website www.natsca.org<\/a> or follow them on twitter @Nat_SCA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Whale, the Dire Rhea and the Boar\u2019s New Nose\u2026 just some of the acquaintances I made at last month\u2019s Natural Science Collections Association Annual Conference.\u00a0 Full of passionate and inspiring museum folk, as well as curious and intriguing animals, Evolving Ideas: provocative new ways of working with collections showcased a swarm of ways of using biological, geological, botanical collections… Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":7415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[369,170],"tags":[226,216],"coauthors":[213],"class_list":["post-7403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-museum-life","category-museum-of-zoology","tag-building-ucm","tag-society"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7403"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7474,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7403\/revisions\/7474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7403"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}