One Day in Cumbria is ready to go

Guest blogger Helen tells you about this exciting take on the space.  If you keep reading to the bottom, there’s a way we can all get involved and make a bit of history:

One Day in Cumbria is the latest temporary exhibition to appear in the Shed at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle.  Installation started earlier this week, where project co-ordinator Mary Ferguson unpacked the new panels and timeline banner, and organised the space ready for the new displays.  

The One Day in Cumbria project marks the Centenary of the First World War.  It has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s First World War: then and now programme, and centres on research into daily life and industry in 1914.   People around Cumbria are invited to help make history on 5 December this year by sharing their updates about life on the same day in 2014, and the final results will be shown on an interactive timeline, at http://onedayincumbria.org.uk comparing and highlighting changes in the county 100 years apart.

The current exhibition at Tullie House forms just part of the One Day in Cumbria project, by displaying the research that the volunteers have been working on since October.  The Shed gallery space also provides a place for visitors to ask questions, find out more and to take part too.    

The One Day in Cumbria volunteer researchers have visited museums, libraries and archives across the county and discovered a wealth of information about life in the area that is now Cumbria.  From tales of fundraising in local schools to stories of Belgian refugees fleeing a devastated homeland to settle in temporary homes, the project highlights the way that local people supported the war effort, each other and those most in need in the early days of the war.

The First World War broke out in August 1914. By December that year, people at home were beginning to feel the effects of the war. But much of life continued as normal. No-one could predict, at this time, how long the war would last and how many lives it would claim.

Do we prepare for and celebrate Christmas in the same ways now as people did then? Is sport just as important or does it play an even bigger part in out lives? Do we still know our neighbours the way people did 100 years ago?  We’d like you to get involved in this exciting experiment.  Submit your story through the http://onedayincumbria.org.uk website or by using the #onedayincumbria hashtag on Facebook or Twitter.

The Exhibition runs from 25 November to 13 December 2014

On 11 December, the Consortium will publish two 24-hour timelines of life in Cumbria. One will chart life on 5 December 1914 and the other the same day, 100 years later. Help make history.

Weekend of Film – Film Making and Film Funding discussion

Photo credit, Tracey Walker

As part of our Weekend of Film we invited people involved with film locally to discuss some of the issues faed by the film industry in Cumbria.

On Sunday 16th November we were joined by Mark Costello & Tony Brown (Cumbria Council for Voluntary Services) , Lyndsey Walker (Wright Walker Production Ltd), Abi Welch (World Film Collective) and Andrew Elliot (Penrith Lonsdale Cinema).

The group met up to discuss both the process of film making, with particular reference low budget films and film funding, focusing on non-traditional methods such as crowd funding.
Creativity formed a large part of the group’s discussions on successful film making. The discussion focused on fostering creativity and how external factors can diminish it. Abi explained how budgetary concerns had led to her struggle creatively, forcing her to seek paid work at the same time as trying to edit her film, splitting her focus. While Mark and Tony both explained that the degree of creativity film makers were given often depended greatly on the remit of the film, who is funding the project and often how many different agencies were involved; all agreeing that generally that the more people involved in the process the less scope for creativity there often is.
These discussions lead the group on to discussing the importance of sharing and collaborating; developing a good team while making a film, being responsive to feedback and fostering good relationships with local volunteers. It was suggested that film makers in Cumbria could benefit greatly from opportunities to meet and work together. Abi highlighted an example in Edinburgh where this happens on a monthly basis. Opportunities to form contacts and make connections with others could be particularly useful when making low budget films the group agreed.

Having talked quite a bit about the pressures of budgets and funding the group then moved their discussions to film funding and crowd funding in particular.
Crowd funding we found out is a method of funding projects by raising money from large numbers of people. Most often done via the internet, people put up their ‘pitch,’ usually in the form of a video and encourage people to support their ideas.
Abi shared her first hand experience of funding her own film ‘Maisha’ a documentary project made with children in Tanzania. Having struggled to find funding in traditional ways she then successfully turned to crowd funding to get her project off the ground.
The group then discussed the success of bigger budget films such as ‘Veronica Mars’ and ‘Enemy of Man’ who had turned to crowd funding rather than traditional Hollywood producers, keeping their creative freedom in the process and in effect guaranteeing themselves an audience of excited backers when the film was released.

See the trailer for Abi’s upcoming film ‘Maisha’ here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFaoxdawiWA
Lyndsey explained that crowd funding is a proactive and interactive way of getting funding, yet it needs a lot of hard work to get people interested and then to keep them updated. A good story or hook is vital, Abi explained, something to capture people’s imaginations. Many people offer rewards for donations ranging from a simple thank you to personal videos from the film’s stars or tickets to the premier. But success is in no way guaranteed pointed out and many pitches fail to reach their fundraising goals, the group agreed that it is in no way a quick fix to film funding.

Overall the group felt that crowd funding has and exciting and important role to play in the future of film funding, in particular for first timer directors and people who have struggled to get traditional funding elsewhere, that it is a forum for passionate and creative people to promote their ideas and hopefully achieve success.

The Weekend of Film

Photo credit Tracey Walker

This weekend we hosted a fantastic new event here at Tullie House, over 400 people came along to our Weekend of Film events. We had 14 film screenings and lots of other activities going on around the museum, here’s a run down of some of the highlights.

The weekend got off to a great start with a screening of LEAVE TO REMAIN with a Q&A with the film’s producer Kate Cook and one of the cast members of the film, Ebrahim Esmail. Leave to Remain explores the hidden world of the UK asylum seeker, with an affecting and sometimes hard to bear script that was written following workshops with teenage asylum seekers, like Ebrahim. Kate answered questions from the audience about how the film was made and the difficulties of getting independent films shown in cinemas. The audience also posed some questions to Ebrahim, a young Iraqi Kurd who was forced to leave Iraq at the age of 15. Whilst filming Leave to Remain Ebrahim was going through the process of getting his own indefinate leave to remain. Thank you so much to Kate and Ebrahim for coming along and making it a very special start to the weekend!

The Weekend of Film got into full swing on Saturday, with screenings in our Lecture Theatre all day, and once the galleries had closed for the day we set up our Border Gallery cinema!

This made a brilliant venue for 5 screenings over the weekend!

Photo credit, Tracey Walker

Saturday night’s headline screening was the brilliantly funny DOWNHILL, a very British comedy following 4 middle aged men on the Coast to Coast walk through Cumbria and Yorkshire – before the screening Sycamore Sykes provided a great soundtrack in the Film Lounge. We were joined after the film by the director, writer and one of the cast members for a Q&A. Our audience loved the film and had lots of great questions for the guys, including asking about the possibility of a sequel, so watch this space for future screenings of DOWNHILL 2 – although if it happens they may be heading for sunnier shores than ours! 🙂

On Sunday the screenings continued, and we were also joined by animator Robin Webb who shared some of the secrets of stop motion animation with our visitors. Getting them to create characters out of clay and animate them, creating some great clips!

On Sunday night the weekend was brought to an end with a brilliant event to celebrate a simultaneous screening of the hotly anticipated, sell out NORTHERN SOUL! Whilst I was busy with the serious business of conducting A QUIZ CALLED WANDA, our very first film quiz, my colleagues were rushing round, transforming our restaurant into SCREEN 3!

Then the music started and we welcomed more than 130 Northern Soul fans to our Film Lounge for two screenings of the film, followed by a Q&A with the star of the film, Elliot James Langridge – who stayed on afterwards to pose for some pictures with his newest fans!

Photo credit, Tracey Walker

We host the Weekend of Film, and our Monday Alternative film nights, to bring Carlisle audiences the best of independent, foreign language and documentary films – offering them an alternative to mainstream cinema. Its great to be involved in events like this, and we’re so proud that our film events have been recognised by the BFI Film Audience Network, who supported the event through the Film Hub North.

Now we’re looking forward to next year – to make the event even bigger and better!

Apprentice Update – 30/9/14

Date 30/9/14

Since my last update I’ve been very busy with apprenticeship work and I’ve had two assessments plus my review!  In my last post I mentioned an upcoming ICT exam which I have now sat and fortunately I passed so that’s one exam out the way. My other assessment was a face to face discussion with my Assessor based on the Module ‘Communication in a Business Environment’. I found the assessment very nerve-racking as we were also being recorded at the same time, so it added to the pressure! Fortunately at my review I found out I had done really well.

The Summer Fayre Event has been and gone and work has now started on the Christmas Fun Weekend! The Summer Fayre went really well and everyone who came had a great time so I was really pleased about it. All the staff got dressed up and got really in to the spirit of the Tudor event; even some visitors came in fancy dress too! As the event is over, my focus is now on the Christmas fun weekend which my colleague and I are starting to plan!

As well as this, another colleague and I recently went to the Wedding Fair at the Racecourse and it was amazing! I loved being there and talking with potential Tullie Brides. I was very nervous before the event as I worried I might have got asked a question I didn’t know the answer to, so I revised the wedding brochure over the weekend! The revision helped a lot and I managed to help the brides to be with all of their questions and queries.

I hope the upcoming weeks will be as interesting as the last few!

#TullieApprentices

Apprentice Update – 26/08/14

Hi all,

It’s been really busy for me over the past few weeks, seems to have been non stop! As two members of

staff have been off, I have been taking on some of their roles on top of mine so my organisational skills have been put to the test!

One area of my work I have been very focused on is the Tudor Summer Fayre. Since my last blog entry I have created a new stand in Tullie’s lobby promoting the event to visitors and I’m currently working on the handouts and signage to put up around the museum on the day.

On top of my work at Tullie, over the past few weeks me and Cassie have been attending ICT lessons as part of our apprenticeship and our exam is tomorrow! So I’ve got my fingers crossed that everything goes ok and we both manage to pass it.

Anyway make sure you come to the Summer Fayre on the 24^th August, from looking at all the activities I can tell it’s going to be an amazing day!

Claire

Up and running

It’s been an eventful week in THe Shed.

After the slight chaos of Half Term where the volume of people meant lots of people saw and enjoyed the What’s in Store space, it also meant that wolf received way more strokes than it should have (the museums constant battle – preservation versus access) we were in need of the slightly calmer events of this week.  It started last Thursday evening where the space played host to its first evening event, a very well attended opening for the Remembrance 100 project, where over 80 pupils, their parents and teachers from Trinity School came along.  I’ve shared a few of the photos below.

Following on from this there was a lovely piece in the Evening News and Star on Tuesday 11th.

Also this week the vote for the Roman object closed.  The winner will be featured in next summer’s show Carlisle in 10 Objects and we are collating the results as we speak – the name of the winning object will appear here next week.

As the voting ended it was replaced by a brand new photography exhibition ‘I remember when…’ This new show in the Work in Progress space is part of the Raw Talent series.  It’s presenting a series of works by young people responding to a brief by The Image Unit for the Carlisle Photography Festival.  Their challenge was to take a single photograph with their mobile phone that finished the question ‘I remember when…’  The results are remarkable.  The festival may have finished but you can see these works on show until 30 November.

Welcome to the Tullie House blog page

This is the place to find exciting and interesting posts covering all manner of subjects. This blog will give you an insight into behind the scenes at Tullie as well as keeping you up to date on all up and coming exhibitions and events.

Remembrance 100 opens in THe Shed

The first of our series of seven exhibitions opens in THe Shed tomorrow.  The co-curator of Remembrance 100 Mark Gibbs is our guest blogger today who shares his expereince of creating an exhibit from such thought-provoking subject matter.

Remembrance 100   6 Nov- 23 Nov

A big part of my job is to build connections between schools and Tullie House, so I’m delighted with how Remembrance 100 has turned out. It’s a show in Tullie’s new experimental Shed space, where we try to do displays differently. The project is a partnership between the Museum and Trinity School in Carlisle. It combines student artwork, powerful artefacts, a web based archive and an interactive peace wall.  Continuing the theme of collaboration, I’ve enjoyed working closely with the Curator of Social History Edwin Rutherford.

The background to the show comes from Tullie’s interest in marking the 100^th anniversary of the War’s outbreak, and the research two Trinity teachers carried out.  Trinity’s Head of History, Linda Hodgson and maths teacher Sarah Lee-Adamson researched the service history of the school’s old boys who were killed in the First World War. Through this they found three names not recorded on the school’s memorial plaque, and so these were added in a dedication service led by the Bishop of Carlisle this October. Their research is recorded in Trinity’s Memorial website, which visitors can access in the show or at home. The school’s year 9 (13-14 year olds) were then asked to design an image to use for the invitations to the event.  

Eloise helping out

Remembrance 100 combines this display of 100 of these student artworks with artefacts from our collections, including a set of letters from Lance Corporal Joseph Hall, who was killed in action at Arras in 1917. We have his last letter home, family photograph and death notification telegram.  This is powerful stuff which made a big impact on the group of eight Trinity students who came over to design the labels and information boards: ‘Our first impressions were indescribable’ said one student pair.  That’s where the innovation comes in.  One group of students designed most of the text in the show and a second group of six students came over to install the show – Museum Assistant Eloise Stott helped us to put the display up making sure everything was level – no mean feat with 100 small artworks!

So Remembrance 100 is a jointly curated show, with student artworks, powerful stories,

and the Memorial website providing a digital element. There’s also an interactive part; a peace wall where visitors are encouraged to think how we can all promote peace, and post that thought on the wall. Suggesting perhaps that Remembrance can be active, and continuing the interest that Tullie has already shown in conflict resolution with the Living Wall display, in the Roman Frontier Gallery (this reminds viewers that border walls are still very much part of our world). It also connects with the debate on the ethics of war themed toys in our current Wargames show.

A short documentary film will provide a permanent record of the show.

Filmaker Paddy preparing for the big shot

Mark Gibbs

Secondary and post 16 Learning Officer

Tullie House