The Big Museum Takeover - Week 1, Day 2

All Hands on Labels

By Jack Welch, Volunteer Press Officer

Micheal (seated) observes as Lee paints on one of the
panels ahead of him.

With the official museum transformation now underway, the tireless volunteers came to a slight stand still as the second coats of paint failed to make their arrival at the due time. A change of plan was required. The labels were of great priority and scaled up a day or two ahead of their original timetable. It was time for the volunteers to find out just what professional techniques other exhibitions use!

Lee, Jenny and Jack, made a quick dash to the adjacent exhibition, copied a close template of the labels beside museum property. Able to replicate the method now, it was time to set to work - once they had let off enough steam during their lunch break. Here, an example is shown below of just what a typical label design will look like:

Lorna and Jack begin the task of scrutinising
archive material.

As the group returned to work, the new paint was found to be too thin to fully cover the previous coating on the panels! Ashley, who was primarily responsible for the effort of painting the walls, commented "It was very frustrating. The coat we used was useless and wouldn't spread far enough." In the meantime we set to work on the labels! From floppy harvest ragdolls to specially designed youth club flags, the challenge was set for accuracy and telling details that weren't already available in other parts of the exhibition.

The brand new cabinets. Empty, but soon to be full to the
brim of material.

Later on in the day, the new upright cabinets at last made an appearance. Ashley, being willing, set to the matter of dusting and giving a spruce up of the displays. As well as this, we continued to construct the timeline. As for the cabinets, we decided to go with a lilac felt, however, the correct colour was not available so we chose a dress lining instead. 
A slow day's work, but with much completed. Lorna reflected here that "We learnt a lot today about the nuts and bolts of mounting an exhibition. It was fascinating working alongside the museum technician and the education manager as they shared their expertise. I was very proud of the DYR volunteers, the technician commented on hard and well they worked."