What does life look like as a placement student at Brent Museum & Archives?

As I wrote on Brent Museum & Archives’ Twitter:

Compared to some of my classmates who are doing their placement in the British Museum, V & A or the Imperial War Museum, I am working in a small Museum with a small team working across both the Museum and Archives collections. In this way, we work in the same office where everyone is close together. The working atmosphere is warm and relaxed here. Because of the small team, my internship has included almost every aspect of the Museum’s work.

Education and Visitor Engagement:

Together with Brent Museum’s Learning Officer, I have helped to design a tour guide on Gamar for family visitors. We have designed several stops on the tour with different kinds of activities. I have also designed a map of the museum for our users so that they will find the objects in the game more easily.

Apart from the App, I created a social engagement plan using the popular mobile game Pokémon Go to attract young visitors on Twitter and Facebook. As reported in the media, Pokémon Go is popular among gamers and has got a wide social impact. Many museums have already used this game to attract visitors and we are going to follow the trend. As a gamer and a museum intern, I wrote several Tweets to introduce our museum to local gamers and encourage them to visit. There is also going to be an offline event for gamers in our museum which connects local history to the game.

Auditing the Collection:

Brent Museum is planning to move some of its collection in a store offsite back to the Museum, so the team is auditing the collection in preparation for the move. I am now leading several volunteers to audit the collection in the store. The time spent in the store goes quickly. Our collections are amazing! Can you imagine a trophy for best cat and rabbit? What happened to a couple who entered their cat and dog into the contest? It is such a lot of fun to guessing the hidden history behind these collections.

During last few weeks, I worked with Brent Museum & Archives volunteers, Sarah, Mary and Joe, auditing many trophies, dressmaking equipment paper products, medical equipment and others. I tweeted the inner side of some blue discolored trophies and a ceramic telephone model from British Empire Exhibition with the tag #BrentUncovered:

Developing present exhibitions and preparing for the future:

I evaluated the temporary exhibition Brazil to Brent (July-September 2016) and wrote a report to present some of my ideas to make the exhibition more accessible to different kinds of visitors and also completed a risk assessment.

The Brazil to Brent exhibition was curated by local people through the Museum’s Brazil themed programme this summer. I helped to edit some of the information collected from local people and presented them in the exhibition. I also wrote some additional labels to offer a deeper introduction to some objects and designed a family trail for family visitors. In order to introduce the exhibition to more visitors, I tweeted the visitors’ comments, the objects in the exhibition and children’s artworks online with the tags: #LeafoftheWeek and #Brazil2Brent.

Brent Museum is the last stop of the British Museum’s Ganesha touring exhibition. The exhibition will open next summer. I am working on collecting information for the exhibition and writing some of my ideas. Looking at the previous experience of other museums who held the same exhibition before us, we learnt a lot. Currently, we are trying to catch up with some local social organizations and Hindu Temples to work in partnership.

Working with visitors is not actually the same as I thought it would be.

Before I had a real working experience in Brent Museum, I didn’t really like working with children. So I chose to challenge myself in Brent Museum! Previously, for me, children were the symbols of naughtiness and impoliteness.

During family activities, I met quite a lot children with their parents and almost every child I met was so lovely and polite. They were happy to join in the activities provided by us and they are so creative! They were willing to share their ideas and feeling to us and their stories were brilliant! Like this story left by a young visitor about a rainbow rabbit!

My placement at Brent Museum and Archives has changed my life. I now know more about local history and enjoy the life in London even more. It has also offered me a deep impression of what work in a good museum looks like. Now I am well prepared and willing to face more challenges and opportunities in my career and my life.

Yuyang Zhao was a Leicester University placement student at Brent Museum & Archives, July-September 2016.