Annabel wrote a fantastic post for us last year about her experiences with the Sneaky Peek project, and has kindly agreed to write another one for us about her wider experiences during  her time with Bradford Museums and Galleries.

She writes:

Since my last blog post for Bradford Museums and Galleries (Sneaky Peeks post)I have been involved in some very exciting things such as: exhibition installations, we networked with an amazing community group and I have also been learning some new photo archiving skills.

Photo Archiving

Firstly I will talk about my new photography skills. On Mondays I have been given the opportunity to work with photo archivist, John Ashton in the photography archive at Bradford Industrial Museum. John gave me a box of prints from the CH Wood collection and my task was to work my way through scanning each print and updating the data onto the iBase system which is a skill John has been teaching me over the past months. After the images have been scanned and updated the images are published onto the Bradford Museums website under Recently Digitised

From the Recently Digitised images that I have done I have started to create a handling book for the public to see (when it is complete). In here the audience will see a small selection of the extensive photographic archive.

Why Don’t We

After attending a conference at Royal Armouries museum on adult learning we managed to exchange numbers with Bradford charity group, Why Don’t We who uses the medium of photography to aid the learning of adults with learning disabilities. Penny Green and I arranged to meet with the group to see if they would be interested in coming into our museums and browse through the collections and to pick out their favourite objects for Sneaky Peeks, 2016. I had so much fun meeting all the wonderful people at Why Don’t We and I am super excited to seeing them again in the near future.

Exhibition Installations

Now the last couple of weeks have managed to keep me super busy and I have loved every second of all the exciting exhibition installations I have been involved with.
100 Leading Ladies by Nancy Honey

This is my second exhibition that I have been part of the installation team for Bradford Museums and Galleries. This exhibition which is now on display at Cartwright Hall is a collection of one hundred photographs of powerful senior women across Britain. With this exhibition I brought my photography skills into the condition checking (which took me some time to complete all 100 images) and I was also able to give advice to others on the nature of the prints.

Once all the condition checks had been completed me and Simon (Gallery Assistant) had to arrange the images into alphabetical order for the hanging to take place the next day. Finally after all 100 images had been hung by the gallery assistants my next task was to paint the entire mirror plates and then arrange a variety of items into museum cases.

Duologue – Bradford Industrial Museum
Now the Duologue exhibition was a completely different experience for me as I previously had no textile/ tapestry experiences, however I was able to transfer the condition checking skills I had learned with 100 Leading Ladies into this exhibition. The artists Beryl Hammill and Shirley Ross were both there on the first day helping out so I was also able to refer back to them for help.

Throughout the rest of the installation I worked closely with Shirley with laying out the cases and seeing what would work best as a viewer. Shirley gave me the freedom to express my opinion which I am very grateful for and we also realised we were on the same wave length on appearance of the cases which was really positive.

The past couple of months have been very educational for me as I have learned new skills relating within photography through the photographic archive. I have also been able to transfer and expand some of my existing skills through gallery installations.