Another great result for Derbyshire heritage!

It was a wonderful night of celebrations on Tuesday 24^th June when 130 guests attended the Biennial Regional Heritage Awards in the magnificent setting of the National Civil War Museum and Palace Theatre in Newark.

 

The awards are organised and funded by Museum Development East Midlands and recognise excellence and innovation in museums, historic houses and heritage sites across the region.

There were a record number of 83 entries from 48 different organisations at this year’s awards, the competition was fierce and the judging team had some difficult decisions to make. The breadth and quality of the entries, and the range of organisations that had entered, really demonstrated how much extraordinary and excellent work is taking place in heritage organisations throughout the East Midlands.

The record office was up against stiff competition from 14 fantastic projects in the ‘Reaching New Audiences’ category and were awarded the Highly Commended prize for our ‘Amazing Pop Up Archives Project’.

We were also there to accept an award on behalf of our colleagues at Buxton Museum who won the ‘The Sky’s the Limit’ category for their ‘Hoards: a hidden history of ancient Britain’ exhibition.

Well done to all!

The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project film and resources – information and inspiration

We are delighted to bring you our project film.  If you didn’t catch us at one of our events you can see what we got up to and hear from the team on their experiences of working on the ‘Pop Up’ project:

 

Inspired?  Want to do something similar yourself?  Then click on the link below where you will find our case studies and Evaluation Report.  These documents provide information on how we created and delivered the project, the lessons we learnt along the way, the project’s achievements and our hopes for future ‘Pop Ups’:

Pop Up project resources – get inspired to ‘pop up’ in your local community

If you’d like to know more about the Pop Up project then do get in touch at karen.millhouse@derbyshire.gov.uk

 

Exhibition – The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project

Sadly we have completed our year of gallivanting around the county taking our archive collections out into the community and collecting people’s stories along the way. To celebrate the culmination of our project a special exhibition is now on in the reception area of the record office which tells the tale of a fascinating, exciting and rewarding year.

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“There are people out there with stories that will never be heard and this project was a way to tell them, a chance to be a part of something bigger in the long run.”  Emily, Pop Up volunteer

This exhibition takes us on a journey which started in Wirksworth, popped over to Ripley, down to Swadlincote, and ended in Gamesley. It features the contributions of the local people we met when we visited their neighbourhood along with songs, poems and musings created as part of the project – all inspired by Derbyshire’s archives and it’s people.

We can’t possibly fit everything we did into one exhibition so in the next few weeks we will upload a film of the project, with performances of all the songs and poems and footage from each event to the blog so keep an eye out for that.

The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project exhibition runs until the 16th March 2018.  Normal record office opening times apply.

 

Collecting stories

That was what this was about. There are people out there with stories that will never be heard and this project was a way to tell them, a chance to be a part of something bigger in the long run.

There was uncertainty when this project began, a sense of unknowing, what we would do? Where it would take us? Who would be involved? We kept going. There were three of us to begin with, the three musketeers if you will, students of Highfields School, yet it gradually decreased to one, me. Three had gone down to Derbyshire Record Office, were introduced to the project, some of the people involved, it was interesting.

Wirksworth was the first event, a chapter covering two days. Placed on the vicarage lawn, tents housing a storyteller, dramatizing a mother’s opinion of her lady’s maid daughter’s letters from France, on how she hated the country, the food and the people. Another housed documents linking to the church and the town and the intrepid people who were faced with the task of deciphering the swirling handwriting. The sun shined over the people that day, but the wind bit the people within.

That day was the door to a wider space, one that would allow us to expand what we were trying to achieve, a collection of stories.

The second chapter was a car boot. One place where there was a greater sense of unknowing. There was a Lady of the Car Boot, collecting bits and bobs, nicks and knacks. There was cake and objects that people could find fascinating. One story told was that of the man who asked “what was being sold?” and in return was “records” to end with “have you got any Elvis”… what a day!

Next chapter was Ripley Music Festival. People of different backgrounds, professions and ages converged together to witness local music. Some visited our bright yellow tent near the playground opposite the stage, a tent that you could see from the end of the street. Filled with documents, maps, performers and archivists that wanted to hear your stories about the man that lived in the butchers at the end of the street from where you lived or that strange women that collected tins of sweets or even about how your cat escaped. It was fascinating. Everyone had a story to tell, most heart-warming of all was a man who had found a relative, one that he knew of but had never seen documentation of and a child who kept coming back for more with the promise of taking our accordion player on Britain’s Got Talent with her!

That day gave us the push that was needed to go into new places.

The final chapter was that of Gamesley. A place that was so closely intermingled yet so far apart. A divide between the new and the old, an estate so close that you could sneeze on one side to be offered a tissue at the other. There was a bucking bronco, barbecue, animals fluffy and feathered gathered together with this bright yellow tent placed in the centre. Stories collected there were intriguing, a man who remembered as a child playing on the tips, collecting circuit boards and taking them home to later in life becoming an electrician in New Zealand. Another of a man who as a boy played in an old hospital for diseases and turned to his mother when realisation kicked in to question “why?!” This was the last of the Amazing Pop Up Archives adventures, but one that rounded everything together. The efforts of the Musician, Storyteller, Poet, Student, Archivist, Photographers and Lecturer joined together to complete a story within its own right.

To end this story, there is the beginning of a new one. One that has become bigger than it was, one that would involve more people, collecting more tales and objects to have a place in history. Wirksworth was the beginning and Gamesley was an end.

But was it really?

We collected stories.

We gained knowledge.

We learned something new.

It’s the beginning of something more….

 

Emily Atkin,

Volunteer, the Amazing Pop Up Archives Project

I wonder what you miss if you stick to the path?

Pop Up Evaluator Sara looks back over The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project so far.

So how can the archives lead the story? We begin again from another place, another part of our own history with this project. As individuals, with our own unique interests, we begin to play with the Archives themselves. I follow Pop Up Project researcher Kate Henderson, with a handful of students and we are taken to The Local Studies Library. This feels how it should do, intuitive, personal, hands-on, and strangely collaborative. We are here together finding and sharing our own topics and places of interest in these archives. Of course many of the original documents in The Archive are irreplaceable, but here in the local studies library we can leaf through drawers and drawers of cards catalogued in often quite extraordinary ways in these Cabinets of Curiosity. Such cataloguing is often quirky, and curiously beautiful.

As we call for and are brought the referenced published materials, the books, newspapers, articles, programmes, the photographs draw me in. They instil in me the idea of wonderment, of being privy to this extraordinary collection of wonders of Derbyshire, of wondering with purpose, of wonder for its own sake. I wonder what you miss if you stick to the path, how you wonder with ideas, how wonderment itself can become the framework of a process.

All good things….

I can’t really believe it but we are just two days away from our final event for the Amazing Pop Up Archives Project!  Our project has been a few years in the making and now it seems rather strange that once Wednesday is over we won’t have any more exciting (and often a bit bizarre!) events to plan. Officially the project runs until the end of November, but that time will be spent writing case studies should other intrepid Pop Up projects wish to follow in our wake, designing an exhibition and prepping the project archive for cataloguing.

If you are up Gamesley way on Wednesday afternoon we will be ‘popping up’ at the annual Meet the Neighbours Day which takes place at Winster Mews.  In this event we will be focusing on the meaning of home and community.  We’ll have a range of records from our collections to spark conversation and lots for the kids to get involved in.  So come and see what the Story of the Silver Spoons, the song ‘Dirty Old Town’, a poem about green beans, a ‘domesday’ book, a cooking pot and an empty suitcase all have in common. The Amazing Pop Up Archives Project – bizarre to the last!

Reflection on the Car Boot Sale – an unedited stream of consciousness story by Maria

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The Amazing Pop Up Archives’ Storyteller Maria Whatton reflects on when we ‘popped up’ at the car boot sale on the Swadlincote/Measham border.

 

How beautiful the world is at 5 a.m. on a Sunday summer morning.

So quiet.

Warm.

Light.

The pit of my stomach churns at the early rise.

Porridge at 5.15 a.m. a gluey paste.

 

The Sat Nav keeps getting lost.

Unnamed Road it shouts.

Unnamed Road as it sends the car twisting down empty lanes

curling through green fields.

 

At 6.30 a.m. turning into the Car Boot

the world of the field is already as full as a city.

Stalls are crowded with colourful tat.

Buyers are purposeful, hungry, eager to buy bargains.

Sellers have spread yesterday’s usefulness on wallpaper tables

in the hope of turning it into today’s little wealth.

 

It’s 6.35 a.m. and the cars are bumper to bumper

snaking in, feeding their pitch cash to the man with the tin.

A colony of Car booters are on the march

mauling mugs, lego men and anti macassars.

 

Our purple and yellow stalls are up

thanks to the bravery of Paula, Wendy and Debi,

who slept in the field all night, sharing poo stories and attempting sleep.

We turn to each other with tired eyes and yawn:

“Are we not mad? Whose crazy idea was this anyway?”

Oh yes, we remember, it was ours.

 

Debi’s van is ready for me to sit and tell stories.

Dressed with tea cups and tea pots, silky cloths and simple stool.

I could kiss her. How thoughtful. It’s the perfect place to tell my tales: a sitting stage, with plastic chairs, a makeshift auditorium – open air.

 

It’s these details that turn the Pop Up Archive into a circus, a magic carpet, a cinema of creativity that brings the past to people out for the morning on a mission to spend a fiver or three.

We haul out the glass vitrines from the van, rolled scrolls of documents and mysterious death mask.

Karen has packed her snugly and with gentle care.

Unpacks her with a light touch, removing bubble wrap and tissue.

(Who was this young woman? Rich or poor? How did she die? Why was her face counterfeited in this way?).

 

A coffee run is immediate as we meet and check plans for the day.

7.30 a.m. and the temporary toilets are already daubed with car booters’ scat and frilled with emergency tissue. There’s nowhere to wash your hands.

 

I chat with Kristian and the lovely young girl with the long blonde hair

whose name I don’t catch because I’m also talking with her Dad and hearing about his map making days.

 

She helps me with the ghost story I have invented about Gresley Hall that houses details of historical facts.

We discuss the nature of the monastery. “Were they Cistercians?”

“Did they wear white?” I need to check.

It’s important for the story.

I sing a Latin hymn like a monk.

 

Soon there is a different music gently playing.

Julian squeezes notes into hamburger air and Debi joins him to dance through the lanes of tables stuffed with clutter. The Pied Pipers of Measham.

She’s wearing a dress clanking with bric a brac: an Aladdin’s lamp, pottery jugs, and leather slung drum.

They cause a delightful stir and are followed back to our pitch by two enchanted children.

Someone says she’s a nutter. They don’t like nutters and they wave her away.

But most people are tuned in to joy and are gladdened as she spins and twirls.

 

All morning Archivists and Artists collect folk’s stories and pin them to an ancient looking map.

The red thread laces together old needle factories, elasticated web emporiums, a Mothers’ anecdotes and hard won fields where grandchildren now play.

 

The death mask opens her eyes, while we are all so busy.

She steals a look at us and listens intently, smiling broadly to herself when no one is looking.

“The Pop Up Archive” she whispers “thank you for giving me some fresh air away from my stuffy box. I remember going to market myself when I was alive, and you know what? People haven’t changed. Not a bit.”

Matt stands in front of our newly purchased gazebos wafting families our way

to hear a tale or write a tag or two.

He’s a calm and casual director of traffic in bright blue trousers and Fedora in case it’s sunny,

he’s never put off by a shake of the head.

Wendy and Paula disarm each new visitor and charm

stories from their tongues onto paper tags.

 

And all of a sudden 5 hours have past.

There’s a shift change.

Folk are beginning to drift away.

Patches of empty grass appear.

 

A Romanian family tell us their story.

A brother and sister say they like England and that people are nicer here than back home.

Their English is fluent. The little girl says she’d learnt most of it in 3 months.

They stay and listen to my traditional tales and say they’d like to tell them again in school on Monday.

 

They are the last. It’s time to pack up.

The hoards of bargain hunters are dispersing, replaced by thousands of small black flies that have turned our yellow gazebo into an inferno of dots.

“Gosh look at them!” I say to Matt.

“Yes, they are thunder flies and them landing like that, means there’ll be a storm in five hours time.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

“No” he replies “I just made it up.”

 

Heaving and hauling.

Rolling up of documents and maps and rugs.

The gazebos snap shut like

stiff umbrellas. It’s a team effort.

 

We just have time to listen to Matt’s poem

and join in the chorus.

I buy the chair he’s been sitting on for a tenner

even though I’ve got nowhere to put it at home.

It is a Car Boot after all.

You’ve got to buy something haven’t you?

I’ll sand it and polish it and make a cushion to hide the defects.

It will be my Pop Up throne.

 

The Next Pop Up event will be at the Gamesley Community Day on 2nd August – more details to follow.

 

 

Records and revelling at Ripley

At a loss to know what to do this weekend?  Why not join The Amazing Pop Up Archives team at the Ripley Music Festival on Saturday.

We’ll be ‘popping up’ with our wonderful yellow and purple tents  full of fascinating records relating to Ripley people and places.  Will you find your ancestors in the First World War Absent Voters list or in the survey of Butterley Company employees (did your ancestors live in a household without a bible? – yes, that was a question on the survey)?

From tales of the Pentrich Revolution and First World War there will be songs and happenings for all the family, so lots to see and take part in.  Make your mark on our map or add to our index cards – just one little snippet about you or your history is all it takes to become a permanent part of the record office collection.

We look forward to seeing you at Crossley Park  (DE5 3GT) from 1pm onwards this Saturday.

Finding the spark

Further reflections – Pop Up Evaluator Sara looks back over how we found answers to those who? what? and where? questions.

Finding the spark, choosing an ignition point, I guess that is one of the key points regarding inspiration. It is up to the Creative facilitators – our Agents of Wonder – to bring these extraordinary archives to life, however the team decides.

So, ideally four events, literally popping up at various places across the county, with a clear mission to draw people in, to engage people with and through the archive. Capturing a history, perhaps more accurately a set of histories of the county’s last 900 years, there really is something for everyone. The early documents may be a bit inaccessible, some are in Latin, and the handwriting is difficult to decipher but there is a real sense that if we can find the right venues, and develop the right strategies, it won’t be difficult to get people excited about the records. The archivist and researcher inspire us once again with their experienced-based interjections that confirm that sometimes the most interesting things are found in the gaps, in the questions that people bring.

The first event will be at Wirksworth Festival, a captive audience and another stunning venue, the vicarage lawn in the heart of this creative Market Town.

Our weekend event at Wirksworth Festival 2016 was a huge success.

The Car-Boot’s Guide to a Beautiful Bargain

Poet and Pop Up Team Agent of Wonder Matt Black shares his thoughts on our latest event which saw us Pop Up at a car boot sale in the Swadlincote/Measham area.

The idea of the Pop Up Archives going to a car boot sale seemed so natural – as a car boot sale is itself a Record Office, a treasure – house of archives, a field full of objects each with their own unique and very personal histories. It was this idea that inspired me to think about writing this poem.

The Car-Boot’s Guide to a Beautiful Bargain

 

Cos it’s beautiful and true, in the car-boot near you

There are useful things that you can find, and other things will blow your mind

We go slowly, aisle by aisle, some of the DVDs make us smile

The Sound of Music, Take That, Top Gun, Fighting Fit Fighting Fat

there’s a thermal t-shirt such as you never knew existed

there’s a fish poacher you get home and wish that you’d resisted

smurfs and kermits and wrestling figures, Barbie dolls and dinosaurs

a teapot that was yesterday in my house, and tomorrow is in yours

everything here once was new in shops,

fashions through the decades, 1970’s glitter frocks

the pink junior rock guitar we bought Chelsea when she was four

2 tins of red paint Jane bought, that John refused to paint on the kitchen door

This old thirties walnut clock

Tick tock tick tocked for Nan and Grandad for forty years

Put into our Ford Mondeo’s boot last night, we couldn’t help some tears

 

Because everything has mystery, and everything has history

And down this aisle there’s golf clubs, and down that aisle there’s crockery

And whispered lives are whispering across the cups of tea

By a van with a generator, plastic tables, and there are we

Comparing –

Wot that’s beautiful

Wot that’s a bargain

And it only cost 50p.

 

It’s either come here or go to Church, and it takes care of Sunday morning

Knock off shampoo, knock off plugs, it’s kind of habit-forming

It’s pre-loved, recycled kitchen bedroom bathroom garden,

We’re British, we don’t haggle, we negotiate and get a bargain

Under a sunny cloudy scudding very Midlands sky

His rusty hammers, her pink wigs, their younger days flashing by,

All our children’s treasures, now they ‘ve grown and flown the nest

You’ve got to clear the garage, love, it looks a bloody mess

Biscuit tins full of Dinky cars you bought when you were 11

The Readers Digest Drivers Atlas of the British Isles 1967

Xmas presents for the kids, The Adventures of Binkle and Flip,

We could have taken a car-load down the local tip

But we chose to take a wiser, and a different route

Cos we like the eternal and the beautiful Car Boot

 

Because everything has mystery, and everything has history

And down this aisle there’s golf clubs, and down that aisle there’s crockery

And whispered lives are whispering across the cups of tea

By a van with a generator, plastic tables, and there are we

Comparing –

Wot that’s beautiful

Wot that’s a bargain

And it only cost 50p.

 

Teapots, teapots, wellie boots, the aisles are paved with good intentions

An exercise bike bought for a New Year’s resolution

Kept 6 months, given to Dave, kept in the shed and then he

Put the bike on E-Bay, and he didn’t even tell me

There’s mountain ranges of Jacqueline Wilson, heaps of Enid Blyton,

Uncle Bob’s Harrington Jacket wot he wore to watch the Who in Brighton,

Old Xmas presents, lego, 45s, floordrobes of taste and fashion,

Oo a chocolate fondue set for nights of naughty chocolate passion

There’s stuff to buy you didn’t know you wanted but suddenly you need

1 incomplete set of Top Trump cards, 1 Flymo lead

 

Because everything has mystery, and everything has history

And down this aisle there’s golf clubs, and down that aisle there’s crockery

And whispered lives are whispering across the cups of tea

By a van with a generator, plastic tables, and there are we

Comparing – Wot that’s beautiful

Wot that’s a bargain                             And it only cost 50p.

 

One of the amazing things about taking part in the Pop-Up sessions is being allowed to hear stories, and to be let into the special worlds and talents of people that we talk to. At the Car Boot I ended up sitting down and having a cup of tea with Mick, who runs the site. He  told me great stories, his talents as a magician, as a businessman, and then he told me that he also wrote poems. They just come, he said. He told me this poem by heart standing next to the tea and burger van where his son Matthew was serving tea and snacks. He said it took him about 15  minutes to write, which I was amazed by. Listening to him tell me this poem was a magical, unexpected and moving moment –

He wrote this poem for his son, Matthew.

 

Matthew’s poem

How I feel so tired

Sitting at my desk

My eyes are getting heavy

And I really need some rest

 

But there is work to do

And so little time

If only the days of my youth

Could once again be mine

 

Time was no problem

It just went on and on

How I spent my happy hours

In my search for fun

 

If only I could have known

That time would go so fast

And very soon these happy days

Would be lost within my past

 

But my life is like the seasons

And my winter days are short

And like a ship caught in a storm

I look for any port

 

A final place to rest my  bones

And live with my dream

Once again to run through the grass

Or paddle in a stream

 

To stand upon that distant hill

Without a single care

And feel the fingers of the wind

So gentle in my hair

 

But time and tide they both march on

No one can change the rule

I must forget the joys of youth

Today I’m starting school.

By Mick McCreath