Aviary in the Atrium

As part of the Nightingale Festival, Wakefield Museums commissioned artist Andy Singleton to create an Aviary in the Atrium, inspired by Charles Waterton's last diary entry in 1865.

Andy Singleton has created two stunning and intricate display cases in the atrium space at Wakefield One:

Photo: Nick Singleton

Photo: Nick Singleton

Photo: Nick Singleton

Photo: Nick Singleton

The detail in these display is incredible, come and visit to see for yourself.


Andy Singleton also worked with a group of school children from The Waterton Academy Trust (Walton Primary Academy, Normanton Common Academy, Normanton Junior School and Lee Brigg Infant School)  to create an installation of 150 birds. 

Pupils from across the four schools made their own birds, following a demonstration by Andy.  Hundreds and hundreds of amazing birds were hatched.  so it was a difficult job to select just 150, to represent 150 years since Charles Waterton's death.

As part of the pupil's experience they had a tour of the museum displays and a special peak behind the scenes.  They helped to select the birds and worked with Andy in creating a swirling flock.

Selecting the birds for display

Behind the scenes

Creating the display

The three atrium cases are a beautiful celebration of Charles Waterton's love of birds and wildlife.

For full details of Nightingale Festival events please see Nightingale Festival 

@WFMuseums #Waterton150

 

Charles Waterton

 

 

A behind-the-scenes work placement

A guest-blog from our work placement student, Sean.

It is the final hour of my six-week work placement and the culmination of a really enjoyable experience. I am a student studying History at the University of Huddersfield. For my course, it was compulsory to complete a six-week long work placement towards the conclusion of my second year. I have had a keen interest in museums since a very young age and decided to pursue a placement in museums. 

I believe local history is a very important part of the study of past events, leading to multiple interpretations and being in many ways more personal to those who study it. Local history can also affect the way national and global history is studied and viewed. Due to this keen interest, I decided to complete a placement at Wakefield Museums and spent most of my time in their Museum Store.

My role was to go through objects in the Museum Store, check their condition and audit their location onto the museum database; which is a brand new skill that I know would come in handy for a future job in years to come. 

The most interesting objects I came across at the store were in the Miners' Strike section, where I came across badges and memorabilia in support of the miners - and also in opposition to the so-called ‘scabs’ who didn’t participate in the strikes. Next year, I am completing a dissertation on Margaret Thatcher and the study of these objects has really helped.  

I was taken aback by the sheer variety of objects which I recorded onto the databases. In the end, I managed to audit just over 1450 very diverse objects, including: 

• Fans
• Paintbrushes
• Punch and Judy Memorabilia
• Moulder’s Tools
• Miners Strike Badges/Miners Lamps etc
• Shaving Accessories
• Brewery Bottles
• Pipe Bowls
• Collection of Glass Negatives
• Cigarette/Tobacco Accessories

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and will take away many skills for future employment. I feel like I have learnt a significant amount about local history in the West Yorkshire region and this will bode well for my academic studies back in Huddersfield.

New Online Museum Catalogue - Liquorice

An exciting new searchable catalogue with over 1550 items from our liquorice collections has been put online. 

The catalogue contains items relating to companies that have shaped the industry in Pontefract and Castleford.  It is based on the themes of advertising, growing, manufacturing, packaging and people related to the local industry.

Liquorice is an important part of the museum’s collection, and the new online catalogue complements the new liquorice displays in Pontefract Museum. 

Highlights of the catalogue include:

Early 19th century hand stamps for stamping Pontefract Cakes.

The spade used by Mr Carter, who was the last commercial liquorice grower in Pontefract.

Mr Carter's Liquorice Spade - from the last commercially grown crop in Pontefract

Packaging for liquorice confectionary produced in the area, including early 19th century tins for Pontefract cakes made by Dunhills, the reputed inventor of the famous Pontefract Cake!

Dunhills Liquorice tin

This catalogue, along with our other online catalogues can be viewed by clicking here.

Come and work with us!

We have recently advertised two jobs - would you like to join us?

Museum Curatorial and Collections Assistant
We are looking for an enthusiastic and self-motivated individual, preferably with museum's collections experience, to join our team.The successful applicant will support the management and development of a museum collection that covers a range of disciplines and  has a particular focus on local history, general social history and archaeology.

Key areas of work include contributing to establishing and maintaining good curatorial practices and procedures, supporting collections inventory and audit control, responding to public enquiries and preparing displays and exhibitions. An ability to work methodically
 with an attention to detail is essential.

The post is based at Wakefield Museum, but will work across all our museum sites as well as the main museum store.

Exhibition and Display Assistant

We are looking for an enthusiastic and creative individual who is passionate about museums and heritage. You will  assist in the practical delivery of Wakefield Museums' exhibition and display programme.

With excellent three-dimensional build skills you will create exhibition elements within the museum workshop, at Wakefield One, and install across our museum sites, whilst also maintaining the permanent displays to good working order. You will have a good understanding of health and safety issues, be able to work to strict deadlines, and work well in a team.

This is a temporary part time post, to cover a 12 month  career break and includes a two month notice period  from either party within the duration of the contract of employment.

Click here for full details of these jobs, and how to apply

Aviary in the Atrium, by Andy Singleton

As part of the Nightingale Festival, Wakefield Museums invited artists to create atrium cases at Wakefield One inspired by 150 Nightingales or 150 birds in Waterton's life.  

We had some wonderful ideas from a wide range of artists.  The chosen proposal was from Andy Singleton.  The display will be in place at the end of June.

Andy Singleton is an British paper artist and illustrator based in Wakefield, England. His work is an exploration of the natural and man-made world through intricate paper cuttings, paper sculpture, hand drawn illustrations and large scale installation works.

Dust Clouds in the Eagle Nebula, 2010 Photo: Richard Sweeney

Andy was born in Nottingham in 1983, but moved to Wakefield at the age of 3. With a strong interest in creative subjects throughout his life, Andy decided to pursue a career as a professional artist. He studying foundation level art art Leeds College of Art and then Animation with Illustration at Manchester Metropolitan University, graduating in 2006. It was during his time at University, that he began to focus on paper as his main material for creating art. 

Merlion, Harrods, London, 2015 

In 2009 he returned to Wakefield and set up his studio to begin to practice as a professional artist, where he began to develop a reputation for very intricate large scale installation works. Andy has now produced work for variety of high profile clients, including the Crafts Council, Liberty, Harrods, Kensington Palace, Manchester Art Gallery, DDB Australia and The Hepworth. 

The Hepworth winter sculpture, 2013 Photo: Andy Singleton

Andy has also exhibited his work internationally, including the USA, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain.

Currently Andy works from his studio at Westgate Studios, in the centre of Wakefield. 

Andy has shared some images that track the development of the display at Wakefield One

Beginning with a picture of a nightingale...

...to develop initial sketches

A test card nightingale

A finished nightingale perched upon Waterton's books

We are very excited about this display and can't wait to see the finished atrium cases.  In the meantime there are lots of other events linked to the Nightingale Festival.

For full details of Nightingale Festival events please see Nightingale Festival 

@WFMuseums #Waterton150

Charles Waterton

Half Term Fun

This week has seen Wakefield Museums deliver quite a variety of family workshops!

From booked sessions to drop-in crafts, families have created, participated and been hands-on. There has been mosaic coaster making, digital drawing, puppet shows and even live owls!

Castleford Museum held a drop-in session for visitors to make their own mosaic coaster with ceramic tesserae – staff worked hard to keep up with demand for the grout to stick designs together!

Mosaic coasters

  

27 May was the 150th anniversary of the death of Wakefield explorer and pioneer conservationist Charles Waterton, to mark this event we delivered our Barmy Birds workshop. We had some amazing creations made and participants even got to look at owl pellets and what they contained - thanks to Jo from the RSPB Yorkshire (Old Moor) for supporting this session.  Feedback from the sessions included “A fun and educational workshop for children and adults alike”

Barmy birds!

There were also some owl related crafts as part of the Wakefield Artwalk and Nightingale Festival (#Waterton150), along with a display of real owls from the Yorkshire Owl Experience. One youngster told us “That was cool, glad we went!”  

Owl Crafts

Charles Waterton and Ruby the Owl!

Some Brilliant Boats were designed over at Castleford Museum.  From origami sail boats to sparkly canoes youngsters (and parents alike) produced some wonderful paper boats.  One design will be taken into school as we were told the child’s new topic will be ships and boats this term – good timing for all!

Brilliant Boats

Cusan Theatre delivered The Princess of the Rainforest - An enchanting visual story with life size puppets, masks and visual treats. “I liked the monkey and snakes, but they had to find somewhere new to live! I liked it” said one of our younger visitors.

The Princess of the Rainforest

The digital drawing session saw the use of object from the collections and museum displays being given a bit of a makeover. Using a free app on iPads participants created their own amazing digital artwork and images. Feedback included “Very informal session. Kids loved every bit of it – working with museum objects, exploring the museum space, learning new app – everything was fun (and yet educational!) Very relaxing as well Thank you.”

Digital Drawing

Taking inspiration from the artist and sculptor Henry Moore, there were drop-in activities at Castleford Museum, with tiles being decorated in our own take on Henry Moore's artistic style.

And still to come:

Henry Moore Sculptures
Saturday 30 May
11am – 2pm
Castleford Forum Museum
Be inspired by the community case created by St Joseph's School and create your own Henry Moore sculpture from clay.
Suitable for all!
Free, no need to book

At Wakefield Museum there are NEW activity sheets that have been developed by Wakefield Museum Young Curators Club (YCC) out for families to use on a daily basis too. The YCC in their last meeting looked around the museum and developed some word puzzle activities for others to take part in. These are out in the museum ‘front room’ for you to have a go.

Keep updated on all our activities by joining our mailing list!

Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in Wakefield!

We are involved in an exciting research project with the West Yorkshire Historic Environment Record, which is already showing some interesting results about Wakefield's distant past!

Over the past couple of months, The Historic Environment Record Officer for West Yorkshire has been examining the Palaeolithic (750,000BC to 10,000BC in the UK) and Mesolithic (10,000BC to c. 3500BC) flint collections of Wakefield Museum for a Historic England funded project. 

This project involves visiting local museums across West Yorkshire, to review and record their flint collections in order to improve the early Prehistoric records of the West Yorkshire Historic Environment Record (HER). The project results will be discussed with leading academic professionals and fed back to the participating museums - improving knowledge and understanding of these collections. 

The project will enable more accurate planning advice to be provided, and help the people of West Yorkshire to better understand the early Prehistoric occupation of the area.  

Middle Palaeolithic flint hand axe from Lee Moor, Stanley

Although the project is only part way through, it would appear from looking at the finds that Wakefield was one of only a couple of locations in West Yorkshire to be visited by Palaeolithic hunter-gathers in the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic period (c. 60,000BC to 10,000 BC).