Volunteers' Voice #15: What is a community?
Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator, shares his thoughts on what ‘community’ means to a museum Last Monday I attended the Sharing Day for Reading Engaged, an Arts Council England project where Reading Museum and the Museum of English Rural Life are collaborating on numerous aspects of our work from retail to volunteering. It was an interesting day where […]
A Take on Teen Twitter Takeover Day
Teen Twitter Takeover Day – Wednesday 27th August, written by Chloe On Wednesday 27th August I took part, on behalf of MERL, in ‘Teen Twitter Takeover Day’. Organised by Kids in Museums, this was a day designed to promote their national Takeover Day in November, by having teenagers take over the Twitter accounts of museums and […]
Volunteers' Voice #14: Volunteers and Our Country Lives
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator. As you will know, we have recently been awarded a significant grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund for our redevelopment project Our Country Lives. I do not exaggerate when I say that volunteers made an enormous contribution to this success and they will play a very important role in […]
4 years of Rural Reads
Our July meeting marked the fourth anniversary of the Rural Reads book club. For four years we have been reading books with a rural theme or setting that have spanned countries and historic periods, covering farming practices, rural lives and countryside themes. The rural theme has not been at all restrictive and the books we have […]
Inspiring Creativity with Objects: Collections-based activities for families
During her time at MERL as Public Programmes Manager, covering maternity leave, Phillippa Heath has introduced some some great new workshops enabling families to get closer to our collections. In this post, Phillippa looks at how the positive reaction to the new sessions will influence our future planning for families… Whenever we plan a family […]
Rural Reads review #7: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator. For the warm, sun-filled month of June we read Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, a quintessentially English book and author. We decided to read it because we realised that in the four years of our book group we had not read a single Jane Austen novel, so we thought […]
Our Country Lives update: Volunteering opportunities
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. Since last week was National Volunteering Week, I thought it would be worth dwelling on the volunteering opportunities for this week’s update. Volunteers play a massive part in the operation of MERL, from staffing events to carrying out vital work on the conservation of objects, […]
Volunteers' Voice #13: Volunteers' Week 2014
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator. This week is the time of the year we stop to think about and celebrate volunteering across the country, whether you are a volunteer yourself, an organisation who works with them, or indeed is entirely run by volunteers, this is the week in which we say thank you on […]
Volunteers' Voice #12: A tale of rural protest in Berkshire
Written by Kaye Gough, Volunteer. Well, we did it! After months of discussions and script conferences; research teams trawling through local archives; rehearsals, sourcing costumes and music, the MERL Players presented two performances of our tableau Performing Protest: Riots against technological change in the 19th Century to full houses at the Museum on Saturday 22nd […]
Rural Reads review #6: Harvest by Jim Crace
by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator and Rural Reads regular. In April, members of Rural Reads read Harvest by Jim Crace – you can already guess the rural connection. Harvest was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2013 and had rave reviews, the quotes on the back of the book give it high praise. “One of his […]