Changing Faces: Dismantling the old Museum
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. The Museum has now been closed a little over two weeks, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy behind the scenes. Although visitors to our Archive & Library, steered through the shop to our tranquil Reading Room, may be entirely unaware of the scale of […]
Discovering the Landscape #8: New Pinterest board
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute The Landscape Institute collections are exciting and visual, as can be seen through the wealth of images we have used in this ‘Discovering the Landscape’ series of blog posts. Now we have created a new Pinterest board dedicated to the Landscape Institute on MERL’s Pinterest site. Pinterest is […]
How many curators…?
As part of our ‘Shut, but not shutting up!’ social media campaign to stay in touch during MERL’s closure period, this week we’re launching ‘How many curators…?’, a new behind the scenes vlog channel on Youtube. Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator and budding film director/producer/actor/anchor, will be meeting members of staff and volunteers, talking to them […]
Project update: Shut, but not shutting up!
Alison Hilton, Marketing Officer, explains that although the museum galleries are now closed for redevelopment, the reading room and gift shop are open, work behind the scenes continues, and a social media campaign is planned to keep the followers up to date with activities and project progress during the closure period. Although the museum galleries […]
Volunteers' Voice #16: Young people as volunteers
Written by Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator As part of the Our Country Lives project we are launching a series of projects to encourage young people (aged 11-25) to volunteer and engage with MERL. The age range is vast, with a wide variety of skills, abilities and interests within this target audience. You may ask: why are […]
Stereotypes and slaughter: Why are horror films set in the countryside?
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. The countryside is terrifying. When you’re not being offered as human sacrifice you’re either being forced to knife-fight your own wife and son to the death, getting eaten by the local wildlife or being pushed off a cliff by a psychotic caravaner from Redditch. Or, at […]
Weekly What's on: Sat 25 to Fri 31 Oct
Archives and texts seminar series: Travels in a publisher’s archive: John Murray and nineteenth-century travel publishing Dr Innes M. Keighren (Geography, Royal Holloway) Monday 27 October 5-6pm Conference room, Museum of English Rural Life* For details of this seminar, read the latest post on the ‘Archives and Texts’ blog Our Country Lives display Saturday 25th to […]
Discovering the Landscape #7: Peter Shepheard
This month Peter Shepheard is the subject of our continuing series of blog posts about MERL’s acquisition of the archive and library of the Landscape Institute. Written by Claire Wooldridge, Landscape Institute Library Officer Sir Peter Shepheard (1913-2002) was an influential architect and landscape architect. After training at the Liverpool School of Architecture, Shepheard moved […]
Rural Reads review #8: 'Clay' by Melissa Harrison
Rob Davies reviews the latest rural read. For the September meeting, we read Clay by debut author Melissa Harrison. Clay is an unusual novel for Rural Reads because it is set firmly in a city; it is, however, about how people within an urban environment interact with the green spaces available to them. This is a theme […]
Dog Carts: Travel in style
Written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer. In my mind the idea of a dog cart is fairly funny. The idea of, say, a Pug or a French Bulldog pulling along bespoke, miniature carts is absurd, endearing and yet a little unsettling, like performing animals at the zoo. They are also some of my favourite objects […]