Post by archangel on Aug 18, 2012 19:30:10 GMT
Just a word from Helen Horsfall. If you would like to attend, booking is critical:
EH at Hurst Castle, the St Barbe Museum's partners for this event, have double-booked themselves for the 15th and would also on reflection like to have a longer build-up (6-8 months) to publicise the event, than the museum had allowed. They and the Museum are keen to proceed with a new date in May or June 2013. In the meantime, the event scheduled for 15 September (with a few tweaks) switches venue, to the St Barbe Museum in Lymington. The disappointing aspect of this for us is not having the atmospheric period surroundings, and no outdoor cooking. However, the faciities available are good for what is now planned, access is much easier and more flexible, and I think there is actually now more potential for the non-cooks to have a full and enjoyable day, albeit doing something a little different to "the usual" SK type of event. So I hope you will still be interested, and won't feel that it's a long way to come for a one-day museum gallery event rather than the promised Castle and cooking!
This project is the first time the Museum has worked with re-enactors but they seem very positive about the experiment so far.
We will be indoors, so there is a cast iron guarantee that it's one event this year where the weather won't stop play!
Public opening times are 10 - 4 but the format of the day easily accommodates later arrivals and earlier departures by individuals, to suit journeys etc.
Just to confirm, everyone attending will be a St Barbe museum volunteer for the day, and covered by their public liability insurance. We receive no event fee, but agreed expenses will be paid, which includes individuals' reasonable travel expenses in accordance with the museum's Volunteer Policy and standard mileage rates. There will almost certainly be a cap on travel costs for out of area volunteers, which I need to confirm, but hopefully a contribution will at least help..
Practical "warning order" style details covering things like access and parking will follow. In the meantime, I would be grateful for confirmation of who is still up for coming. I would also welcome your comments and ideas about the format of the slightly re-shaped day, and anything you would particularly like to do or can suggest to add to the ideas already on the table. From discussion yesterday with Sarah, the museum's Community Outreach & Exhibitions Officer, we have sketched out the following as a plan to add to or deviate from:
•Theme - the Stuart banquet. Focussing on the sweetmeats course, and the melding of local ingredients with luxury imported foods at the upper end of local society, gets us "out of gaol" in respect of the lack of on-site cooking facilities...
•Space available to us - an empty temporary exhibitions room (former shop) visible from the main entrance; the main gallery (will be occupied by a Pratchett illustrations exhibition at the time but offers a space for short talks or individual displays); an education room, with sink and wipe-clean surfaces (suitable for kiddie activities and mess-making).
•Activities:
•Ongoing display in the temporary exhibitions space of a table laid for a banquet - will need to be peopled to supervise equipment and answer ad hoc questions. The museum has a volunteer who runs a local pub and is interested in food history, and will prepare one or two of the dishes in bulk quantities for public tasters.
•Scheduled first person enactments of a banquet - as the food is cold we can repeat this more than once during the day, unlike "main meal" fine dining
•Scheduled enactment of the Lymington Court Leet (if a pared down "cast" allows) with presentments linked in some way to food production, transport, or preparation. Master Edwin Stobart, and weights and measures infringements, and "pigs in the town" are things which spring immediately to mind and I'm sure a lot of fun could be had with a loose "food" theme.
•Children's activities in the education room linked to the Stuart Banquet theme - so far we have come up with making and decorating cardboard roundels (the highly decorated wooden plates used to serve Jacobean banquets), and playdough sweetmeats and marchpanes.
•No-cook cooking [preparation] demo in the education room with take-away recipe sheet
•Short timetabled talk(s) in the gallery space, pitched at the slightly more knowledgable visitor - open for volunteers/topics on this front.
•Regular museum volunteers - two or three will be attending to supplement the numbers available to assist with activity supervision etc, at least one of whom is keen to borrow kit and get really involved (a potential recruit for a local regiment?!)
•Publicity - costumed people strolling the adjacent streets in spare moments to attract attention and visitors for the museum (an opportunity for fresh air and a bit of gentle sightseeing if the weather is fine).
The event is in support of the St Barbe Museum's current HLF funded project and upcoming exhibition on Food and Farming - details below - so everything needs to link in some way to the theme.
EH at Hurst Castle, the St Barbe Museum's partners for this event, have double-booked themselves for the 15th and would also on reflection like to have a longer build-up (6-8 months) to publicise the event, than the museum had allowed. They and the Museum are keen to proceed with a new date in May or June 2013. In the meantime, the event scheduled for 15 September (with a few tweaks) switches venue, to the St Barbe Museum in Lymington. The disappointing aspect of this for us is not having the atmospheric period surroundings, and no outdoor cooking. However, the faciities available are good for what is now planned, access is much easier and more flexible, and I think there is actually now more potential for the non-cooks to have a full and enjoyable day, albeit doing something a little different to "the usual" SK type of event. So I hope you will still be interested, and won't feel that it's a long way to come for a one-day museum gallery event rather than the promised Castle and cooking!
This project is the first time the Museum has worked with re-enactors but they seem very positive about the experiment so far.
We will be indoors, so there is a cast iron guarantee that it's one event this year where the weather won't stop play!
Public opening times are 10 - 4 but the format of the day easily accommodates later arrivals and earlier departures by individuals, to suit journeys etc.
Just to confirm, everyone attending will be a St Barbe museum volunteer for the day, and covered by their public liability insurance. We receive no event fee, but agreed expenses will be paid, which includes individuals' reasonable travel expenses in accordance with the museum's Volunteer Policy and standard mileage rates. There will almost certainly be a cap on travel costs for out of area volunteers, which I need to confirm, but hopefully a contribution will at least help..
Practical "warning order" style details covering things like access and parking will follow. In the meantime, I would be grateful for confirmation of who is still up for coming. I would also welcome your comments and ideas about the format of the slightly re-shaped day, and anything you would particularly like to do or can suggest to add to the ideas already on the table. From discussion yesterday with Sarah, the museum's Community Outreach & Exhibitions Officer, we have sketched out the following as a plan to add to or deviate from:
•Theme - the Stuart banquet. Focussing on the sweetmeats course, and the melding of local ingredients with luxury imported foods at the upper end of local society, gets us "out of gaol" in respect of the lack of on-site cooking facilities...
•Space available to us - an empty temporary exhibitions room (former shop) visible from the main entrance; the main gallery (will be occupied by a Pratchett illustrations exhibition at the time but offers a space for short talks or individual displays); an education room, with sink and wipe-clean surfaces (suitable for kiddie activities and mess-making).
•Activities:
•Ongoing display in the temporary exhibitions space of a table laid for a banquet - will need to be peopled to supervise equipment and answer ad hoc questions. The museum has a volunteer who runs a local pub and is interested in food history, and will prepare one or two of the dishes in bulk quantities for public tasters.
•Scheduled first person enactments of a banquet - as the food is cold we can repeat this more than once during the day, unlike "main meal" fine dining
•Scheduled enactment of the Lymington Court Leet (if a pared down "cast" allows) with presentments linked in some way to food production, transport, or preparation. Master Edwin Stobart, and weights and measures infringements, and "pigs in the town" are things which spring immediately to mind and I'm sure a lot of fun could be had with a loose "food" theme.
•Children's activities in the education room linked to the Stuart Banquet theme - so far we have come up with making and decorating cardboard roundels (the highly decorated wooden plates used to serve Jacobean banquets), and playdough sweetmeats and marchpanes.
•No-cook cooking [preparation] demo in the education room with take-away recipe sheet
•Short timetabled talk(s) in the gallery space, pitched at the slightly more knowledgable visitor - open for volunteers/topics on this front.
•Regular museum volunteers - two or three will be attending to supplement the numbers available to assist with activity supervision etc, at least one of whom is keen to borrow kit and get really involved (a potential recruit for a local regiment?!)
•Publicity - costumed people strolling the adjacent streets in spare moments to attract attention and visitors for the museum (an opportunity for fresh air and a bit of gentle sightseeing if the weather is fine).
The event is in support of the St Barbe Museum's current HLF funded project and upcoming exhibition on Food and Farming - details below - so everything needs to link in some way to the theme.
