Making, Using and Enjoying: Museum of the Intangible.

The Museum of English Rural Life (The MERL) in Reading holds a collection of objects, archives and library items which tell the story of rural England.

The focus of The MERL’s work has always been to preserve rural culture and on preserving physical objects from the rural past. In 2016, The MERL began a project which considered Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), a term that refers to traditions and ‘lived experience’. It includes things like:

• Storytelling and folklore
• Social practices and rituals
• Festive events
• Skills to produce traditional crafts

ICH describes the knowledge and understanding within a particular community. Often the knowledge and ideas are not written down or recorded but are traditions that are shared verbally from person to person. These traditions are important in giving meaning to objects and they help people to understand how and why objects were made and used.

 “At The MERL we worked with a range of creative practitioners to create exhibits for our Museum of the Intangible, in response to our collections. We ran three collections-based workshops to which selected creative practitioners, along with subject specialists, academics from the University of Reading and elsewhere, and other stakeholders were invited.”

The project was funded through our Designation Development Fund (DDF).  It investigated how The MERL could harness the potential of ICH in their collection and helped them to develop approaches to deepen their research and understanding. They used practice-based research to “go beyond mere description”. The project explored the collection through new collaborations with a range of people. Participants included:

• Creative practitioners
• Academic experts
• Young people
• Specialist users (people who make and use the technologies represented in the collection).

The project began by carrying out research into three specific sets of material to improve existing knowledge about each of them. Each one consisted of a mix of archives, books, objects, photographs and artworks. The combination of materials meant the selected material was difficult to work with. Items were hard to find in the online database and were also difficult to interpret for display which is why they had previously been under-researched and underused. This was why they were selected.

The initial research reports formed the basis of planning for a series of workshops. The workshops focused on three main themes: “showing, telling and doing”.

Participants were from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. This included artists, students, academics, farmers, historians, designers, and story-tellers. The workshops explored some of the Intangible Cultural Heritage contained in The MERL’s holdings. They devised new ways of thinking about the collection and how people could engage with it.

Following on from the workshops, The MERL commissioned seven creative responses from contemporary makers. The work created was designed to explore the “intangible” elements of the collection. The commissions included:

• A series of videos based on traditional folk tales (Chip Colquhoun: Life of the People).
• A community knitting project combining the processes of knitting and listening (Felicity Ford: Knit a Song of Shepherds)
• A film-based work using sheep as film makers by attaching cameras to them (Teresa Murjas: I, Sheep).

“… For me the exciting part of the objects is their lived memory and connections with our real messy lives. I understand how important it is to preserve the objects for posterity, but one thing I welcomed about this commission was the opportunity to engage with the collections in ways that didn’t involve white gloves and special appointments … I especially enjoyed looking at the things relating to the history of shepherding… I’m always thinking about that when I am knitting with wool.”

– Felicity Ford aka KNITSONIK (a wool and sound artist talking about their experience working on the ‘Making Using Enjoying’ project. Extract from The MERL’s Intangible Museum Toolkit)

“Projects like this are a great way to appeal to new audiences”. – Chip Colquhoun (a storyteller talking about their experience working on the ‘Making Using Enjoying’ project. Extract from The MERL’s Intangible Museum Toolkit).

The outcomes of “Making, Using and Enjoying” also supported web improvements including the development of functionality to host online exhibitions.

In parallel to the workshops, The MERL also made changes to their database thesaurus. New terms were added to better describe and record the less tangible aspects of practice. For example, terms directly related to the ‘making’ and ‘using’ of objects are now included.

A legacy of this project is a toolkit to support museums that are working to harness the potential of ICH. Through the toolkit, The MERL will share knowledge based on their experience. It will help other museums to bring their collections to life by enriching them with real, lived knowledge and understanding.

Ollie Douglas is the curator at The MERL. He has the following reflections on the project:

“This project has been liberating in terms of the approaches taken. The generous support of Arts Council England has allowed The MERL to celebrate the amazing creativity of a diversity of voices from outside the museums world. It has opened up new avenues for exploring the narratives, representations, and connections that underpin The MERL collections. It has also added in its own small way to the many exciting conversations about art, making, intangible heritage, skills, and living history that are emerging across the cultural sector”.

Find out more

More information on the Intangible Museum project

The Designation Development Fund supports high quality projects which centre around developing the ‘research and understanding’ of Designated collections, facilitating greater engagement and use of the collections.