Take Part - Summer 2020

National Museum Wales Volunteer Newsletter

takepart Summer 2020

10th Anniversary of Volunteering Edition

Croeso to the 10th Anniversary Edition of Take Part!

Over 7,000 people have donated their time and energy to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales over the last 10 years. When we created our first volunteer policy in 2009/2010 we already had volunteers, but we had no system to support them or a way to develop their skills. Amgueddfa Cymru’s decision to create its first policy was the first step in investing in our volunteers.

During these 10 years we’ve gone from:

100 volunteers a year to OVER A

1,000

only one way to get involved, to GROUP VOLUNTEERING, YOUTH FORUMS AND PLACEMENTS

having volunteers only in National Museum Cardiff to HAVING VOLUNTEERS IN ALL

7 MUSEUMS

VOLUNTEER HERE having no staff to a DEDICATED DEPARTMENT WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS TO SUPPORT VOLUNTEERS AND OUR LOCAL COMMUNITIES

We aim to continue to invest and develop volunteering for the next decade!

In this edition you will find a few stories of the hundreds we have across Amgueddfa Cymru. A few stories that highlight the amazing contribution our volunteers give to us and the people of Wales.

You are our inspiration and we thank you for donating your time to us!

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Contents Cover Story 4

Mural for Volunteering in Tŷ Gwyrdd

Building from Scratch 5

Bryn Eryr

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Feature Article 6

Green Fingers and Volunteer Gardens

Exhibitions 8

Dippy Exhibition

Amgueddfa Cymru Youth Forum Feature 10 Palaeontology Twitter Takeover

Collections Feature

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12 Botany 13 Owen and Una

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Volunteer Makers 14 Craft Club 14 Volunteer Updates

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Contributions by: Ffion Davies Senior Volunteer Co-ordinator and Strategy Co-ordinator

Alexander Vieira and Colin John Amgueddfa Cymru Youth Forum Members

David Zilkha Volunteer Co-ordinator

Katherine Slade Curator: Botany (Lower Plants), National Museum Cardiff

Danielle Cowell Learning Manager, National Roman Legion Museum Kate Evans Community Engagement and Learning Officer, National Wool Museum Zoe Gealy Senior Learning, Participation and Interpretation Officer, National Waterfront Museum Liam Doyle Learning, Participation and Interpretation Officer, National Museum Cardiff

Ingrid JĂźttner Principal Curator: Botany (Diatoms), National Museum Cardiff

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Sally Whyman Curator: Botany (Vascular Plants), National Museum Cardiff Elen Wyn Roberts Learning, Participation and Interpretation Manager, National Slate Museum

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Cover Story

Mural for Volunteering in Tŷ Gwyrdd

by Ffion Davies, Senior Volunteer Co-ordinator and Strategy Co-ordinator In 2019, we set about commissioning a young artist (under 25 years old) to create a mural celebrating volunteering.

Our aim was to give a young artist the opportunity to gain experience and access the wealth of knowledge and collections we have at the museum. The quality of applications was amazing and highlighted the young talent we have in Wales.

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Robin Bonar-Law won the commission and set about creating a mural inspired by volunteers across Amgueddfa Cymru at St Fagans National Museum of History. Robin spent six months travelling across Wales, hosting workshops with volunteers, and creating the mural.

The mural now sits pride of place in Tŷ Gwyrdd, our volunteer hub at St Fagans. We have also created new sustainable bags from the design which every volunteer will receive. Copies of the mural will also be displayed at each museum at Amgueddfa Cymru.

The design and colour are inspired by the friendly society banner from our gallery and the Llys Llywelyn tapestries which were created by our own volunteers. Robin created his own typeface for the mural which was inspired by the earliest welsh stone carvings found on a cross near Ogmore.

The Mural was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Building from scratch

Bryn Eryr

by Ffion Davies, Senior Volunteer Co-ordinator and Strategy Co-ordinator.

One of the fantastic projects that volunteers have contributed to over the last ten years is the building of Bryn Eryr, our Iron Age farmstead. It was constructed between 2012 and 2015 as part of the ‘Making History Project’ which is the biggest redevelopment project in St Fagans history. It is a recreation of an Iron Age farrmstead that was excavated near Llansadwrn in the eastern corner of Anglesey.

The decision was made to recreate two earlier houses from the site, as due to their close proximity to each other, it is quite likely they formed one building with two rooms. Such buildings, sometimes called figure-of-eight, or conjoined roundhouses, have only recently been identified, and consequently very few reconstructions have been attempted.

Volunteers helped us build Bryn Eryr from the ground up! Alongside staff and external crafts people like a thatcher, volunteers; • de-barked wood from a 100 trees for the roof and walls • grew 8 hectares of spelt and then prepared it for the thatched roof

• • • •

built six foot thick clom walls made 5m of rope from stingy nettles limewashed the walls, and thatched the roof.

Alongside volunteers, we also had people from charities such as The Wallich, schoolchildren from across Wales, our Youth Forum and pupils who were at risk of exclusion from Michaelston College.

Even today charities and companies come every year to help us maintain Bryn Eryr by limewashing the walls and maintaining the land around it.

Since Bryn Eryr was built 30,000 school children have taken part in workshops.

Several of the Bryn Eryr volunteers have gone on to volunteer with the Museum in different roles, or have even become staff, such as Dafydd who is now Shop Supervisor.

All of the hard work and time that the volunteers put into helping building Bryn Eryr and making it an authentic representation of an Iron Age farmstead can be seen in the reaction of school groups and visitors to Bryn Eryr who get an immersive look into life in Iron Age Wales.

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Feature Story

Green Fingers and Volunteer Gardens One of the many great volunteering success stories over the last ten years has been the establishment of the volunteer-led gardens at St Fagans, National Roman Legion Museum, National Wool Museum and National Waterfront Museum. The articles below from the volunteer supervisors for each garden provide a fascinating insight into the work that the volunteers carry out in the gardens.

Community Gardens at St Fagans – by David Zilkha, Volunteer Co-ordinator The main aim of our volunteering programme is to engage with our communities in Wales. We want to take steps to include people who might otherwise face barriers to access, and we’re keen to work in partnership with other organisations.

The community gardens at St Fagans meet all three of these goals, while getting people involved with nature and creating beautiful outdoor spaces – a perfect combination!

The Wallich support people with experience of homelessness to volunteer in the enclosed garden behind Tŷ Gwyrdd, normally every few weeks. Being enclosed means there’s lots of wall space so, in addition to the main beds, they have constructed some hanging wall planters and we’ve discussed plans for creating hanging mosaics. The group enjoy the garden although they save their ‘highest’ praise for the time last year when they got the chance to try out CoedLan, the High Ropes at St Fagans.

Innovate Trust supports adults with disabilities to volunteer in the Secret Garden. They usually come in multiple times every week so they have developed the garden far beyond the original site with a wildlife pond, wildflower meadow, raised beds, and paths leading to a hidden wooded area. It’s hard to believe it’s the same challenging neglected patch they took on over 2 years ago.

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Roman Garden National Roman Legion Museum – by Danielle Cowell, Learning Manager, National Roman Legion Museum The Roman Garden at National Roman Legion Museum was inspired by the Romans and their use of plants as herbal remedies. Did you know that roses where used to cure headaches? Sage was used for itchy bums?

During its ten years the different raised beds have had different plants from herbs, to vegetables. In 2014 one bed was devoted entirely to poppies, in remembrance of World War One as part of the Wales Remembers 19141918 project across Amgueddfa Cymru. Romans used poppies both medicinally and as food, roasting the seeds and serving them with honey.

Alongside these raised beds we have an avenue of conifers, fruit trees and olive trees as well as seating areas and a fountain.

Every visitor and school child has to walk through the garden and forms an important part of the visitor experience and the museum itself. This garden is maintained by volunteers and select few groups such as Brewin Dolphin who help out.

Dye Garden at National Wool Museum – by Kate Evans, Community Engagement and Learning Officer The National Wool Museum’s Gardening Volunteers are responsible for the Museum’s Dye Garden. It is a wonderful sustainable garden filled with a variety of plants which have been traditionally used for their natural dyes. Flowers, leaves and roots are harvested as the season progresses and dried or frozen ready for dyeing, for example, fleece, yarn or fabric in the end of season Autumn workshops. The garden is a community project and an important asset.

The Gardening Volunteers take an active role in the community, for example, they work with the local primary school eco group offering different activities including dye and sustainable gardening workshops.

Last year, the Dye Garden was again awarded the prestigious 2019/2020 Green Flag Community Award. In 2019, the Volunteers worked with Dr Nicol, of the Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University. They provided a valuable contribution to the Economic Botany Collection which is held in National Museum Cardiff to expand the range of dye plants in the Collection.

The volunteers will once again be planning for next year’s planting and hope to develop the sustainable aspects of the garden whilst maintaining its importance as an historical dye colour resource.

GRAFT Garden National Waterfront Museum – by Zoe Gealy, Senior Learning, Participation and Interpretation Officer, National Waterfront Museum GRAFT started at National Waterfront Museum as a community engagement focused garden space in January 2018. The volunteers have been at the heart of the project from the very beginning and have helped to develop a plain lawn into a thriving city centre edible landscape.

Along the way the GRAFTERS have built raised beds and a pergola, grown from seed, harvested produce which is donated to local charities across Swansea, learnt and shared seed saving skills and undertaken pickling and chutney making.

The space has become a haven for many including our local wildlife and pollinators, and the beehives in the space have been an exciting addition. As the garden has progressed the volunteers have also helped to build a cob oven, which is used to host suppers for the volunteers as well as paying public, and it is a fabulous space for events being held at the museum to spread out into.

The volunteers have come from a huge variety of backgrounds and groups such as West Cross Day Care centre and Goleudy, as well as many individuals and everyone works together to form new friendships and learn new skills.

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Exhibitions

r u a s o in D e h t y p ip D and Volunteering

by Liam Doyle, Learning, Participation and Interpretation Officer, National Museum Cardiff

Over the last ten years volunteers have contributed to a wide variety of exhibitions across the Museum, for example Wriggle! and guided tours of Romanticism and Myth in Art in 2014, Queen: Art and Image in 2012, and Fragile in 2015. One of the biggest exhibitions that volunteers have been involved in was the visit last year of Dippy the Diplodocus from the National History Museum in London. Liam Doyle who supervised the volunteers during the project tells us more about the exhibition and how the volunteers engaged with the public during Dippy’s stay at the Museum.

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In October 2019, National Museum Cardiff welcomed a very special guest. Dippy, the iconic Diplodocus skeleton from London’s Natural History Museum, visited Wales for the first time.

Dinosaurs are always popular with our visitors, but Dippy proved to be something else! We welcomed record numbers into the museum and it became normal for crowds to gather in the Main Hall, eager to get a glimpse of all 21m of our new guest.

To help bring Dippy to life, we recruited a team of 42 dedicated Dippy Volunteers. The team included everything from GCSE students to retirees, each bringing their own knowledge and personality to the role. The team engaged with a staggering 12,000 visitors in total! I think it’s fair to say the exhibition wouldn’t have been the same without them.

Standing out in their red t-shirts, the volunteers helped visitors of all ages have fun and learn more about Dippy. Some chose to use a handling trolley which gave visitors the opportunity to get hands-on with real fossils. The volunteers’ knowledge and enthusiasm were infectious.

Visitors loved the chance to hold fossils that lived at the same time as Dippy – around 150 million years ago.

Volunteers also ran art carts which were posted around the museum. The term ‘art cart’ might sound relaxing, but it’s a different story when surrounded by the Half Term hordes! The volunteers showed great patience and ensured everyone went away happy. It was great to see the Museum full of children in dinosaur masks roaring and stomping around the galleries. And the volunteers’ contribution didn’t end there.

One made narrated video guides on Dippy, which we posted on our website. While another created an amazing dinosaur information sheet for the team to use. S4C even came in to film an interview about how volunteering with Dippy helped one of the volunteers as a Welsh learner.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep Dippy forever. At the end of January it was dismantled and taken away to continue its tour. But we managed to keep something even better! Many of the Dippy Volunteers have since joined our team of Explore Volunteers and continue to engage and enthuse visitors of all ages.

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Amgueddfa Cymru Youth Forum Feature

Palaeontology Twitter Takeover

by Alexander Vieira and Colin John, Amgueddfa Cymru Youth Forum Members.

Amgueddfa Cymru’s Youth Forum is aimed at young people between the ages 14-25, who are encouraged to be partners in decision making and organising activities in the museum. The forums also explores the views of young people and address issues they think are important to them.

There are youth forums in all of the museum sites and youth forum members have taken part in a wide range of different projects such as producing a cartoon map, Our Cardiff, to coincide with Treasures on display in National Museum Cardiff with artist Huw Aaron and building a bread oven at Bryn Eryr, the Iron Age farmstead.

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On 26 June this year, the Museum’s Learning Department hosted a palaeontology-themed Twitter takeover written by us, where we discussed dinosaurs, underappreciated scientific heroes, challenged stereotypes about palaeontologists and the study of ancient life.

In reality, palaeontology is a broad and vibrant field bursting with innovation, excitement, and amazing scientists from many different backgrounds, some of which we featured so they could serve as role models for young people interested in Earth Sciences.

Our passion for history & science inspired us to do this takeover, but most of all, we wanted to show that dinosaurs & palaeontology are for everyone! The clichéd image of rugged white men in jackets hammering away at old bones in the desert is far from representative.

One of these was Mary Anning, an 1800s fossil collector & palaeontologist who became known around the world for her important discoveries on marine reptiles. As the first female palaeontologist she faced many obstacles by her male peers in the scientific community.

It took decades for her to be properly recognised for her accomplishments, and to this day such efforts continue! Like with the Mary Anning Rocks campaign, whose goal is to raise funds for a statue of Mary to be raised in Dorset.

Another woman with significant contributions to palaeontology is Angela Milner, who alongside Alan Charig named Baryonyx, the UK’s most complete extinct theropod dinosaur!

We also told the story of Thai palaeontology pioneer Varavudh Suteethorn, whose geological mapping is responsible for providing most of Thailand’s fossil finds. Due to poor coverage of POC (Palaeontologists of Colour), however, he did not even have his own Wikipedia article until 2018, when one of us wrote it as part of Wikipedia’s 2018 Asian Month.

Dino discoveries are also rich in history. In 1915, Ernst Stromer named Spinosaurus, a semiaquatic theropod and the longest known land predator.

Many of Stromer’s fossils were sadly lost to WWII, but his research opened the door for Morrocan-German palaeontologist Nizar Ibrahim to continue his work by unearthing more remains of this incredible animal.

We love Jurassic Park and it got many of us into dinosaurs. But the film also shows unhelpful stereotypes about palaeontologists, fake science and outdated ideas about dinosaurs. This image of palaeontology can also hold back queer people. One of our Youth Forum members says that as a young trans man, people often questioned his passion for dinosaurs. He notes that when it comes to gender, we don’t know much about extinct dinosaurs. We can identify some fossils as male or female. But in most cases, there’s too little scientific evidence to assign gender to fossils. This is why we’re happy Sue the T. rex is a non-binary dinosaur who uses they/them pronouns. Trans palaeontologist Riley Black compares the discovery of dino bones to self-exploration, uncovering the nature of themselves as much as that of any dinosaur.

You don’t have to dress like a cowboy, or even need to study dinosaurs, to be a palaeontologist.

The fossil record is so complex and vast that there are many choices for what you can specialise in, from the evolutionary origins of sea urchins, to the feeding habits of ankylosaurians.

So above all what we want you to take away from this is that palaeontologists are not all like Alan Grant! We certainly aren’t and we still love natural history.

And POC Cameron Muskelly, whose autism helped fuel his passion for Geology, can also remind us that prehistoric life has more to offer than just dinosaurs, as he specialises in organisms from the Cambrian, an exciting time in which life flourished and diversified.

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Collections Feature The following two articles demonstrate how volunteers have played an important role in preserving and increasing accessibility to two very different sections of the Museums’ collections.

Volunteering in Botany over the past 10 years

by Katherine Slade, Ingrid Jüttner and Sally Whyman, Botany Department, National Museum Cardiff The teams of volunteers that we have had over the last 10 years in the botanical collections have made more projects possible, and more enjoyable.

With over 600,000 botanical specimens to look after in Amgueddfa Cymru, we just couldn’t have achieved as much without them. Here are just a few highlights from our outstanding botany volunteer team.

Photography The delicate botanical specimens in the Museum’s collection, require careful handling as well as attention to detail from our volunteers. A key part of making these collections more accessible is photography.

Pressed specimens, which cover flowering plants, ferns, conifers and algae, are ideally suited to digital scanning as they are mounted flat on card along with their collection data. To image these specimens, volunteers use a specialist herbarium scanner, funded by the Global Plants Initiative Project. The resulting high quality scans will be used to create a virtual botany collection. Since they began in 2019, volunteers have imaged over 500 specimens. The first milestone reached was the digitisation of all Welsh Poppy specimens.

Preserving New collections are acquired each year and all need work to make sure that the specimens and their data are cared for and preserved for future research. Volunteers are upgrading the material the specimens are kept in or mounted on to conservation-grade level. Depending on the condition or botanical group, this requires different skills, but always a good helping of patience!

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Currently, volunteers are repackaging mosses collected by Dr. Tony Smith, with each new packet individually folded from conservation material. The c.8,000 specimens are rich in Welsh material and contain many previously unknown records of mosses, contributing to our knowledge of the Welsh flora.

Work is also progressing on remounting the worldwide grass collection made by T.B. Ryves.

This is a huge task involving c.6,500 specimens of economically and environmentally important grasses.

Volunteers have made a significant impact to ensure the longevity and accessibility of the botany collections. We hope that caring for our collections, coming together over coffee, displaying work at open days, and even the occasional pantomime trip, make it more than worthwhile for our volunteers! Diolch o galon o’r Adran Fotaneg!

Owen and Una

by Elen Wyn Roberts, Learning, Participation and Interpretation Manager, National Slate Museum Owen was a student at Coleg Glynllifon when he first came to volunteer at the National Slate Museum in 2017. His tutor felt that the Museum was a perfect match for Owen’s interests and asked if he could come to us on work experience or to volunteer. Following 18 months volunteering two mornings a week with us, he went on to the ‘Engage to Change’ programme at Ysbyty Gwynedd. He’s now working at Antur Waunfawr and intends to return to volunteer with us one morning a week, once our programmes recommence.

Owen has been involved in all kinds of activities at the Slate Museum – painting, degreasing and oiling machinery from the collection, but what he enjoyed the most was preparing Una the steam engine for the public.

Owen isn’t particularly talkative, but his social worker said that he didn’t stop talking about his time at the Museum! He has certainly grown in confidence in many ways – he has become familiar with the staff, he greets everyone by name and is far more communicative than when he began volunteering here. He has been in contact with the visitors when working on Una, he has become familiar with our systems and a typical workday here, developed a practical knowledge of health and safety in a ‘real’ workplace situation and an understanding of the importance of PPE (personal protective equipment).

The work Owen has undertaken is obviously valuable to the Museum, but also our staff have grown to understand Owen and grown in confidence through working with him, gaining more awareness of aspects of autism.

“I like to see the difference after cleaning Una’s brasses – seeing them going from dirty to gleaming.

I’ve enjoyed learning how to use the polish properly.” Owen

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Volunteer Makers

Craft Club

by David Zilkha, Volunteer Co-ordinator We are very fortunate to have some very talented designers and makers amongst our volunteers. The article below from Volunteer Co-ordinator David Zilkha, highlights one of these groups – the Craft Club in St Fagans.

Craft Club is a group of volunteers with skills in working with textiles. The Group comes in once a month, usually using the large area with tables in the volunteer hub at Tŷ Gwyrdd. It’s a very friendly, sociable group, who have got to know each other well since they formed over 5 years ago.

We ask departments throughout all our museums for anything they need making out of textiles. The department provides the material and a short briefing, and then the volunteers work their magic. They have created lavender bags from plants grown in the St Fagans garden for sale in the shop, rag rugs to help protect the interiors of the historic buildings from visitors’ muddy shoes, and handmade bunting for events. They created costumes for children to wear during learning activities in Llys Llywelyn (the medieval court at St Fagans) and are now working on a costume again, this time for Big Pit. The Museum is planning to increase attention to the role of women in mining, and as part of this, need a costume for a ‘Pit Girl’, which the group are creating. They have accepted, perhaps with a slightly heavy heart, that all their meticulously-crafted, beautifully handmade clothes will need to be ‘distressed’ and/or covered in coal dust before being placed on display!

During lockdown the group hasn’t been able to meet in person, but we have kept up monthly catch-ups via Zoom.

The volunteers have been able to continue some of their work on Pit Girl at home. Many of the group have also been active in making PPE for key workers, especially in the NHS. This hasn’t been work for the museum, but we’re pleased that the Craft Club network has been useful in sharing tips on PPE construction with organisations who need it and access to specialist equipment such as overlockers. I confess that I’m still not entirely clear what an overlocker is, despite the group’s best attempts to educate me! As we prepare for our phased reopening and gradual restarting of volunteering programmes in person, we’ve put out a call to other departments to let us have ideas or requests of what is needed next. Given the range of what our museums cover, it could be almost anything.

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Getting in touch about Volunteering If you have any questions about anything featured in this newsletter or volunteering, please email us at volunteering@museumwales.ac.uk, or ring us and leave a message on (029) 2057 3002, and we will respond to your enquiry as soon as possible.

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