A million pounds worth of improvements for Cornish museums

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has led the investment across a range of partnerships in Cornwall. History, Social Sciences and Geography academics at the University of Exeter’s Tremough Campus, Penryn, successfully secured funding for museums to redisplay important galleries and enhance their educational roles by creating websites that cater for different subjects and stages in the national curriculum.

Four major museums: the Royal Cornwall Museum, Geevor Tin Mine, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and the Penlee House Gallery and Museum, will be reaping the benefits of the collaborative projects. History and Geography students and academics from the Tremough Campus are committed to work with the museums to expand what they have to offer to local as well as national and international visitors.

The awards will assist Cornish cultural organisations that are looking to make a strategic change in their business, harness new technology and explore opportunities for innovation. AHRC funding also provides an opportunity for the University to contribute its expertise across a range of academic disciplines as well as providing students with direct experience of work with the local community, public and commercial organisations.

The lead Academic of Humanities and Social Sciences for the University’s Cornwall Campus Professor Alan Booth, said ‘We are establishing a track record with museums, providing expertise and funding to help develop museum projects. We can add value to the museums by adapting our skills to their needs and allowing them to undertake projects for which they have hitherto lacked resources.’

Geevor Tin Mine is benefiting from Professor of History, Roger Burt’s extensive knowledge of mining through the Knowledge Transfer Programme (KTP). KTPs are projects jointly managed by the University and the museum partner and are undertaken by a graduate recruited from the national labour market. Professor Burt acts in an advisory capacity with additional technical support from web developers from the University’s School of Education and Lifelong Learning on how best to showcase Cornish mining in the wider context of the worldwide industry. He brings detailed knowledge of how the industry has developed, its financial structure, mining methods, labour management, technological conditions, and the ways that Cornish mining techniques have been exported to the rest of the world. The web team have suggested ways in which the educational materials can be delivered on-line and tailored to the different stages of the national curriculum. The museum and University team is working to create appropriate learning modules for different age groups from primary to international researchers.

The AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship (KTF) with the Royal Cornwall Museum (RCM) brings together academics in the Institute of Cornish Studies (part of the School of Humanities and Social Science), the same web development team and leading professionals from the museum to help with the redisplay of the museum’s galleries. The RCM is keen to ensure that its redisplay embraces the latest academic perspectives on Cornwall’s history and that key aspects are available on the web before the redisplay has been completed. Professor Philip Payton and his University of Exeter colleagues have been working very closely with senior staff in the RCM not only to bring their expertise in sources and interpretation, but also to lay the foundation for future collaboration in research and re-confirming the roles of both the RCM and ICS in the intellectual life of the county.

A similar collaboration is at the heart of the Penlee House and Gallery and Museum AHRC KTF. The Museum has been keen for some time to redisplay its social history gallery and this award has finally allowed the project to go ahead. The Tremough History Department is utilising the skills of University resesarcher, Joanna Mattingly who worked under the general direction of Associate Professor of History, Dr Jonathan Barry on a previous University-backed project on the history of the fishing communities of Mousehole and Newlyn in west Cornwall. The main goal is to make the Museum’s social history gallery complement its display of paintings by the famous Newlyn school of artists from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

This sharing of professional knowledge is extended to Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, which is collaborating closely with geographers and historians on a series of projects. The first project involved three AHRC-funded Geography studentships to study aspects of the visual and imperial culture of Britain’s main telecommunications companies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Within six months Porthcurno also secured a prestigious AHRC Museums and Galleries award, this time with the History Department. Under this award, the University historians, led by Dr Richard Noakes, will research the working culture of the telegraph companies (now Cable and Wireless, but a number of predecessor companies until the mid-twentieth century). Their findings will be used for a large new gallery display at Porthcurno and other telecommunications sites in west Cornwall. Once again, the web developers are involved and working on a major extension of the Museum’s website, which will include educational and interactive dimensions.

Over the last year the University’s Humanities and Social Sciences departments have been able to make strong links and contacts throughout the county and with tourism on these projects. Professor Alan Booth, said of the projects, ‘The University has a strong commitment to engage in the local community. We would like to build a reputation for being an organisation that can assist museums in developing their projects with the best tools and expert knowledge available’

He added, ‘It’s a mutually rewarding initiative as we are able to offer students practical placements by being involved in small scale projects that make a direct impact on the local area and improve employability options for the graduates.’