Warm flesh on old bones
Telling the stories of a museum collection
One story began in a box of
bones on a tabletop.
A second began under the
table with a mantrap’s rust.
A third began on a windswept hilltop where a
grass-grown ridge hid an ancient story of pain and sorrow.
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| Event: Arbor Low on a misty Midwinter morning |
I have worked with Buxton
Museum and Art Gallery on and off for some 17 years now. Activities have ranged
from writing the poetic version of their audio trail to running events that
have wandered from lantern making to crystal growing, puppet mammoths to the precise
drawing of Victorian designs and random mermaids
In 2016, the museum was
closed for a refit funded by the Heritage Lottery. As part of that Collections
in the Landscape project, I was asked to coordinate a programme of events that
took the collection out into the landscapes it came from. (Just Derbyshire, no
thrilling field trips to Egypt or the fossil beds of the mid-west USA). We took
fossils to limestone gorges, brought a handling collection to the local
Victorian garden, unwrapped geological specimens in dripping caves. As the CITL
project developed a second Collections project also grew.
Six artists working in
different media were brought in to respond to themes within the collection.
With museum being closed and galleries up for redesign, there was time to pause
and reflect, a chance to look at different ideas. There was a potter, a visual
artist, a sculptor, a textile worker, a musician composer and me as a
storyteller and a poet. I can’t speak for the others but for myself “The
Collection of the Artists” went abruptly from being enjoyable and entertaining
to, like the skeleton from Liff’s Low*, being very personal, very telling. Still
enjoyable. Still rewarding. But with bones enough to shake a soul.
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| tools fanned across centuries and lives |
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| walk, wander, listen |
My challenge within the
project themes was to explore “home”, in particular the shift that must have –
might have – presumably – came when Mesolithic wanderers became settled Neolithic
growers. There was a question about a sense of belonging to a place, to a
neighbourhood and not to a journey, not to a migration across landscapes. These
were the people who went on to raise Arbor Low and draw lines and alignments
across the Peaks mirroring the changing patterns of the skies.
So, I sat and turned over bones in my hands. I gazed into the eye sockets of the ancient dead. I worked with children from Biggin School below Liff’s Low’s hill and we talked about life here thousands of years ago. We could become his family. We could tell his story. Our story of him. Of course, it was our story of him! Of course, all the other pieces I wrote were my stories of them. I am a storyteller, not an archaeologist. I am also a zoologist so every so often my analytical, natural history head speaks up – and gets over excited at auroch’s bones or the proximity of a cave bear skull. But I am a storyteller. In this context, my job isn’t to tell the science story, it is to remember – and to remind other people – that these were people too, to wrap bones in warm flesh, to imagine lives and let them live again in words and the images those words create.
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| exploring with friends |
And pulling a skin curtain
against the wind,
We are as hefted to the hills as
our sheep.
(from: Becoming Home, G
MacLellan)
Collection of the Artists was a Buxton Museum and Art Gallery project supported
by Derbyshire County Council, Heritage Lottery and Arts Council, England. The
finished pieces by the artists are on display (or can be heard) in the Wonders
of the Peak gallery in the Museum. Lullaby of the Larks, an exhibiton of photographs, paintings, installation and musics from the Collections projects, by Kidology Arts is on at Buxton Museum until 24th November. Details, here
More of my work from
Collection of the Artists can be found in a booklet: Tales from the Wonders
that is available from the museum shop or direct from me (£3.50 including
P&P within UK)
The project as a whole can be
explored on the Museum site, here
Your museum: if you would
like that personal story touch in your collection – or are interested in an
event or longer project, drop me an email and we can have a chat
*Liff’s Low: a tumulus
excavated by Bateman in the 1860s. The skeleton taken from the tomb is a key
part of the new Wonders of the Peak gallery
LIFF’S LOW NIGHT
CHARM
Do not
fear the darkness,
As the
firelight dies,
My
little horse girl.
Your
father is a wolf,
And the
night
Holds
no fear
For the
hunter.
Do not
fear the cold,
As the firelight dies,
As the firelight dies,
My
little fox boy.
Your
mother is a bear,
And the
cold,
Is
never cold,
Under
fur....
The opening verses of a lullably written with ideas from the children of Biggin Primary School. Full Charm can be found in Tales from the Wonders
