A weekend of measuring, chatting and custard creams.
Over the weekend of Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st of March, ‘The Hidden Project’ saw almost 170 people (and Rolo the dog) come forward to be measured and photographed for a chance to be cast in Red Saunders’ ‘Hidden Project’ here in Derby.
Saturday
Saturday was an early start at the Silk Mill! Armed with cameras, tape measures, biscuits and a lot of enthusiasm, project volunteers arrived at 9am ready to greet Derby’s hopeful candidates. Abby, Lauren and Rico -Media Students from the University of Derby - took all the casting photographs over the weekend and worked solidly over the two days.
Volunteers Andy, Ruth and Emma were always around to provide a warm welcome, whilst Laura, Alice, Rebecca and I stepped outside our comfort zone, grabbed a measuring tape and took on the task of taking people’s measurements. Thanks to the brilliant tutelage of Tim Heywood from Derby Theatre, we soon got into the swing of things. As Alice commented ‘It is not often you spend a Saturday afternoon running a measuring tape round perfect strangers without someone asking questions about your behaviour...!’. Thankfully, all the people we measured were brilliant and accommodating – thank you everyone!
One of the project photographs will be set at Rolls-Royce and it was wonderful to see so many employees of past and present attend the casting; whole families arrived to get involved! One person, who has lived in Derby and worked for Rolls-Royce for 8 years, commented that Derby had become ‘home to our newly expanded family and not just a place to stay for work’.
Talking to people throughout the day, it was clear that many wanted to be involved as a way to celebrate the City of Derby. It was a way to feel connected to Derby for many, whilst others wanted to feature in Red’s work to become part of the city’s history themselves, leaving an image of them within the museum. One person revealed that, for them, it was about bringing ‘back to life forgotten moments from the history of the people.’ Furthermore, there was a sense of putting Derby’s heritage firmly on the history map.
‘Derby has such wonderful heritage and I’m proud of our city.’
‘... too often we forget the great role Derby was playing in our national story and the Hidden project gives the chance for local people to celebrate this...’
‘Taking part in something that records Derbyshire’s really rich and important industrial heritage would be a privilege.’
Phew! We were all getting really excited by such brilliant responses at ‘Hidden’ HQ. We didn’t think it could get any better... and then came Rolo the dog. As the only canine participant, Rolo stole the show. He was brilliant in front of camera and was more than happy to receive the vast amounts of fuss bestowed upon him whilst his owner was photographed too.
The afternoon, though quieter, was just as exciting and varied. Emma, one of the super volunteers, did an amazing job of spreading the word on the streets of Derby and many people turned up ad hoc to spend a slice of their sunny afternoon with us. We ended the day tired but happy. We had photographed, measured, chatted, and listened all day and now we were ready to pack down ready for tomorrow. Oh yes, and as volunteers we also suspect we set a world record for consumption of custard creams!
Sunday
Allenton, you did not disappoint us! Our second day of casting was at St Martin’s Church & Community Centre. Everyone there was really welcoming and looked after us brilliantly – we were really grateful! Thank you!
‘To be honest, I didn't know what to expect but I had a feeling in my gut that I had to take part and I'm so glad that I followed my gut instinct.’ – commented Ann, a brand new volunteer. We were chuffed that she, together with Lottie and Sue, chose Mother’s Day to take care of all the excited participants.
Sunday saw several people who were involved with UNITE come forward to be involved. This added another perspective to the relevance of this project to Derby. People told us that one of their key reasons for involvement was that, as a social activist, they identified with the history behind the project. Another commented ‘It reminds us that things that we give for granted, such as a 5-days week at work, are achievements reached thanks to people fought before we were born.’ As someone who had not previously been aware of the national importance of events such as ‘The Lockout’ at Derby Mills (one of the settings for Red’s work,) I really began to feel the ‘hidden’ nature of the history we are dealing with through this project. Although I became a volunteer because of my interest in projects that fuse history and art in general, I found my connection to the project changing and becoming much more rooted to Derby itself.
For some, it really was all about trying something new and seeing how they could contribute. With no doubt, there was a strong sense of belonging and wanting to see what each individual could bring to the whole. As one person remarked ‘I bring me, a bit wrinkly but a real person.’
That, it would seem to me, is the best contribution. Thank you, Derby!
We are hoping to let people know about those selected to the production by the end of April. Keep an eye out on our blog for further insights into production week!
By Claire Roe - Volunteer assisting the Hidden Project
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Over the coming weeks objects will be returned to the refurbished Silk Mill Museum of Making Derby. It is opening in 2021. Objects have been in storage units since wholesale museum decant in 2018. Many of the objects - propeller blades, models of pit pony carts, miniature Rolls Royce cars and jet planes, foundry patterns, cast iron clock dials - were put in plywood crates - wood boxes made in the workshop on a CNC router. The cases were machined, assembled, and crucially designed, by a small team of volunteers. lead volunteer was Steve Lockley, retired nuclear engineer, mathematician, chorister, woodworker, artist, blogger. Below is a blog post, lost but now found - stored up - recording the crating process.
Steve Smith workshop Supervisor Museum of Making, Derby
Crate Expectations
Introduction
Background to why we are going to this vast expenditure of time and trouble (albeit free) to crate up the museum artefacts...
Design requirements
Crates must be
· Robust
· Cheap
· Easy to prepare
· Easy to assemble
· Have no adverse effects on the contents
· Minimise volume – so each crate is customised to its contents
Design choice
The classical design of crate features a softwood carcass with thin plywood panels, as can be seen in the picture to the right (the sample was kindly provided by Andy Miller).
However, we have little experience of this type of design, and preferred instead to use a scaled-up moulding box construction, as shown below. This uses simple rectangular panels of 18mm ply, with housings routed into the top, bottom and sides to ease assembly and add rigidity. All the pieces are easy to cut out, either on the saw table or, preferably, on the NC router.
We did a price comparison of the two designs, and found that with an economic ply of reasonable quality, the cost was quite competitive with the softwood carcass in the ‘classical’ design.
The length, width and height of the crate internals are basically the dimensions of the contents plus an allowance for packing – a delicate object needs a fair amount of wrapping, so we would allow 25mm (1 inch) all round, whereas something sturdy might only need 5mm (~ ¼ inch).
Here we see the individual parts that go to make up a crate: two sides, two ends and an identical top and bottom. When these are assembled, by screwing them together, we end up with a crate as shown below.
You’ll notice some additional features on the finished article. There are two elliptical hand-holes in the side, together with a couple of ‘mouse-holes’ on the lower edge. The latter were included following concerns that the ply might give off gases (from the adhesive used in manufacture) that could affect the article inside. In addition, there is an identification number routed into the end panel, to help identify the article contained in the crate.
After some trial and error (mostly error), we found that we could automate the process by which we produced a crate for any given article. This involved a number of steps using computer programs and input from the designer, basically as follows –
1. Measure the article to get its length, width and height.
2. Enter these dimensions, together with things like identification number, into an Excel spreadsheet.
3. The spreadsheet would calculate the dimensions of the components of the crate, and produce the contents of a file for input into Inkscape, a computer drawing package.
4. Using Inkscape, the basic crate components can be developed if necessary (to get more handholes for example, or to duplicate or reposition the components as desired)
5. The output from Inkscape is then fed into Vcarve, where the designer sets up the actual cutting instruction set for the NC router.
6. The crate components are then cut out, finished and assembled.
Looking at the process in a bit more detail –
Having measured the article, we create a folder on the computer for that article and copy in the Excel spreadsheet. The name of the article, the dimensions and identifier are entered as shown below. (The other parameters in cells C9 to C16 don’t tend to vary from job to job.)
The spreadsheet then calculates the dimensions of the crate components in cells A20 and B20 (for the sides – the other components are included but not shown here).
The default measurements used in Inkscape are ninetieths of an inch (!). This apparently is a common scale used for printers, which is the main application for Inkscape. Whatever, the spreadsheet applies the scaling to the dimensions in millimetres to get the Inkscape equivalents, as shown above.
These Inkscape measurements are then automatically embedded in cells in the next worksheet in the spreadsheet, as we see in the following illustration. This sheet, denoted ‘text’, is basically an Inkscape input.
To get the data into Inkscape, I found the easiest way (for me) was to create a text file (here called ’41.txt’, select the first column in the spreadsheet, and copy and paste into the text file. I then change the file extension from .txt to .svg (scalable vector graphic). Double-clicking on this file the opens it up in Inkscape, as we show on the next page.
I then save this file as a PDF (Vcarve won’t accept SVG files, unfortunately).
The next step is to open up Vcarve and import the PDF. We can then duplicate and rearrange the component and make whatever adjustments are required. Components from other crates can be added to the sheet to cut down on waste. (This means a lot to some people, who spend a lot of effort filling up every last corner...)
Once the sheet is laid out, the cutting path instructions for the NC router can be set up and saved to file, but I don’t propose to deal with that here.
Lastly, the file containing these instructions is copied to a USD stick, which is inserted in the router console and the actual cutting out performed at last.
It all sounds a bit tedious, but once you’ve done it few times, it all becomes straightforward. Honest.
Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World writes about how tools and manufactured objects are extensions of the body into the world and thus ways of knowing it. The book identifies the ‘presence of the human body in the artefact’, and by homology the remaking of the human body into a concomitant made object/artefact. Making and constructive working, then, are crucial elements within any engagement of the body and the mind with the world, and of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world. That is to say, she supports Hegel’s doctrine of the self-creating power of work and making.
Scarry writes of how, unlike political torture and violent war - which are investigated in the first half of her text as extreme examples of hyper-negative un-making – transformative therapeutic positive making is involved in the re-making of the world, and as such, the reworking of pain, and in this making human subjects relieve the sufferings of contemporary and historical oppression and conflict. Published in 1985, The Body in Pain might also be useful in discussing the micro tortuousness and conflict found in the everyday world and how simple acts of making and creating can transform these pains. Covid 19 has brought non-conflict societies closer to the extreme world of unmaking in which the body is under complete attack. In which case everyday making will become, when we can return to making, a material and symbolic tool in our rehabilitation. Rescuing, repairing, restoring creativity and constructive activity to their proper path. Paradoxically, The Body in Pain argues the vocabulary of “creating,” “inventing,” “making,” is not, in the 20C, for some illogical ideological reason a morally resonant one. More than this, “material making” is ‘ethically neutral’ or conceived as an ‘amoral phenomenon’. But, she continues, ‘an unspoken question begins to arise’:
‘Given that the deconstruction of creation is present in the structure of one event which is widely recognised as being as close to being an absolute of immorality (torture), and given that the deconstruction of creation is again present in the structure of a second event regarded as morally problematic by everyone and as radically immoral by some (war), is it not peculiar that the very thing being deconstructed -- creation – does not in its intact form have a moral claim on us that is as high as the others’ is low, that the action of creating is not, for example, held to be bound up with justice in the way those other events are bound up with injustice, that it (the mental, verbal, or material process of making the world) is not held to be centrally entailed in the elimination of pain as the unmaking of the world is held to be entailed in pain’s infliction? The morality of creating, of course, can be inferred from the immorality of uncreating […] That we ordinarily perceive it as empty of ethical content is itself a signal to us of how faulty and fragmentary our understanding of creation is.’
The Silk Mill workshop has now returned to making the Museum of Making museum. Post-covid-19 lockdown.
Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, 1943, Laura Knight - Credit Imperial War Museum
A model railway has been a feature of Derby’s museums for nearly 70 years, having been originally unveiled in May 1951. First housed at the museum’s primary building on The Strand, it was then moved into the Silk Mill site when that became the city’s Industrial Museum in the 1970’s. Latterly it was rebuilt twice to better suit its new location. It is fondly remembered by many in Derby and the wider area, being many people’s first memory of the museum whilst on school trips and visits with family. The O-Gauge (1/43rd the size of real world) model was last seen publicly in late 2016, after which it was carefully disassembled and put into storage, due to the Silk Mill’s renovation beginning shortly thereafter.
A photograph of the railway taken at its initial site inside the Museum and Art Gallery
The model railway itself is ‘set’ and themed around a fictional location in the Derbyshire countryside called Kirtley, during the summer of 1906. This name was chosen as it was the surname of the first Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Midland Railway, Matthew Kirtley. The scenes, trains, and practices depicted within the model were originally designed to resemble those of the Midland Railway itself, in a sense preserving them at a time. This at a time in the 1950’s, when the real railway beyond had just been nationalised, and was set to become more homogenous. During this period 60+ years ago, nearly all real passenger and freight trains in the East Midlands were still being hauled by steam locomotives. Thus, time has turned what was a manifestation of living memory then, into a 114-year-old time capsule in today’s world of diesel and ever-increasing electrification.
Currently, the jigsaw pieces that make up the model railway in its current form are being worked on at the warehouse where they are currently held, coincidentally a stone’s throw away from one of the railway lines leading out of Derby Station. That work is primarily being undertaken by volunteers, all passionate about the project, some arrive learned in model making and railway history, while others are eager to learn, and all are committed to seeing the project come to fruition when the model is installed into the new Museum of Making.
Volunteer Annette is instructed in carving air-dry clay to mimic a section of dry-stone wall
A few weeks ago, I went to see the railway as it’s being worked on and talked to those people involved about what was happening. In essence there are two teams working on different parts of the model, one working on the scenery, buildings, and other objects that the trains will run through; and another whose job is to work on the parts less visible to the public, such as the layout’s structure and trackwork. Both have their’ work cut out, as the space in the museum where the end product will operate is both larger and shaped differently to how it was before, necessitating changes to the overall design to utilise that space better. Principally, the height of the model railway is being lowered, from around chest height to waist level. This means the space can forgo the raised viewing platform it used to have, letting children and the less abled have a better and unrestricted view of what’s going on. To do this involves the ‘behind the scenes’ team measuring and cutting to size every metal leg that holds up the railway’s wooden baseboards. Elsewhere others have been remodelling the track behind the backdrop, where trains complete their’ circuits and are stored and changed when not in use. Re-using as much of the pre-2016 trackwork and complex electrical wiring here as possible, as well as making sure each of the many lines fit together and works in its new position, is a hugely complex task. Getting it correct now however, as with the real-world railway, will make all the difference to the smooth running of the model.
One of the structural legs being reassembled after cutting & a track point labelled and ready for reuse
The picturesque miniature landscapes that will make up the new Kirtley are also being reworked, with features and the positions of buildings (some dating back to the original 1950’s design) being moved relative to each other, or carefully altered to make a model that is both an accurate and visually pleasing depiction of Edwardian Derbyshire. These alterations also include making places where sections of landscape can be dropped out, so a person can appear from under the middle of the railway to reach anything (otherwise inaccessible from the edges) that may need attending to once the layout is reassembled.
Resin and gravel being used to recreate waterways such as those found around Matlock and Dovedale
As a rail enthusiast myself, I loved and was fascinated by both researching the model railway’s history and context, and by the amount of forethought and workmanship that it will take to revive it for a fresh generation of visitors. I can’t wait to check up on it again soon.
Hi, my name is Nigel, and I started volunteering for Derby Museums back in June.
I started as a LEGO FAN’tastic volunteer - maintaining the tidiness of the Museum environment, and assisting visitors in finding their way around the Museum-. It was a fun experience, and I certainly felt welcomed right from the beginning. It was also nice to have a go at building Lego structures myself and being creative with attaching Lego to our graffiti wall.
When I started getting involved in the LEGO exhibition, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was pretty much entering into an environment that I had not experienced before. This was quite exciting for me given the fact that I am generally keen on taking on new challenges, even if it brings me somewhat out of my comfort zone. My experience involved communicating with visitors, other volunteers, and young children. It was nice to have the opportunity to share my personal experience of student life in Derby with the various visitors. It was also rewarding to see the young children having fun being creative with the LEGO.
As part of my experience with Derby Museums, I also took part in the Red Saunders’ ‘Lock Out’ Hidden Project photo shoot on June 22nd 2019. This photo shoot involved reliving a series of marches in protest to the Silk Mill Lock Out that took place in 1833/34 which attracted the attention of many people nationwide. It was interesting to conjure up the various emotions of this difficult time.
I would like to thank all the staff at our Derby Museum & Art Gallery for making me feel so welcome there. I will always be looking forward to visiting Derby Museum & Art Gallery!
Blog written by wonderful Co-production Volunteer - Nigel Duffus
If you’d like to volunteer or find out more about more about it - visit our website https://www.derbymuseums.org/support/getinvolved
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There comes a point in everyone’s life when you ask yourself ‘ How on earth did I get myself into this situation?’ For me it came this week on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning at 9.30 am, a time when I would usually be reading the paper, a cup of coffee nearby and planning my day. Instead I am in a builder’s hut (admittedly a very up market builder’s hut, with two storeys of Portacabins, loos, showers, a canteen, offices and a meeting room where you are more likely to find laptops than a shovel – the Savoy Hotel of builder’s huts) doing a very passable imitation of a speed camera , wearing a yellow plastic box with a clear panel in the front over my head, while a kindly looking man squirts an aerosol smelling of bitter aloes through one of the small holes in the panel. I have to say when I can detect the smell and then do it all again wearing a facemask . The test is to establish that the mask fits properly, and is not a prelude to a career as a speed camera or as an extra in a Star Wars film, but to make sure I can undertake volunteer activities for Derby Museums and Art Gallery safely. The equipment is not to protect me from the public but for wearing when I am cleaning the bricks removed from various parts of the Silk Mill so that they can be used again in the re-creation of the museum. That’s what is happening behind the hoardings on Cathedral Green by the river –a place I am coming to know well.
I contacted the Museum six months after I moved to Derby for information about volunteering, hoping this would offer me a chance to learn more about the place I had come to live in, get me out of the house and create some social contacts. I suppose I thought I would spend some time standing around museum galleries, smiling a bit, directing people to the toilets and the cafe, and making sure that nobody ran off with any of the exhibits. And I could not have been more wrong. The very first meeting I attended, discussing the evolving plans for the Silk Mill, wiped out all my preconceptions about what museums are about. There is a commitment to co-production on this project which basically means that volunteers have every opportunity to bring their experience and knowledge to bear on every aspect of the project and those ideas and suggestions are taken into account and considered seriously. The process has been in train for several years but is now moving towards the final phase with the building taking shape, the commissioned artworks coming together, the workshop being up and running soon, and the outreach projects linking in with the whole Derwent Valley World Heritage site.
So no standing about galleries, but as a volunteer having the opportunity to discover more about the history of the city and the surrounding area. Not just of the buildings but the people, the social structure and how the landscape has adapted. Some of the highlights have been:
On a Saturday morning welcoming people who wanted to take part in the photographic artwork to recreate the Silk Mill Lock Out which will be a main feature in the new reception space , and within minutes of meeting them measuring their vital statistics and asking personal questions about dress sizes – certainly stops you being shy. Listening to their reasons for coming forward and being part of the project, and being moved by the passion many of them feel for their city.
Visiting the Derwent Valley sites and realising that out of this lovely green quiet Derbyshire valley , with its small limestone built villages came the seeds of manufacturing processing which would change the world.
Sitting in the fitful sunshine in Belper outside the Makory, showing people how to do Kumi Himo braiding (which I only learned the basics of five minutes ago) whilst other visitors learn how to weave on small laser cut hand looms. The Makory is a converted mobile library, fitted out with work surfaces, display /presentation boxes and all sorts of ingenious bits of kit. The vehicle is just starting its programme of facilitating opportunities for making and working with schools and at public events.
Taking groups of people through the site on Hard Hat Tours of the Silk Mill so they can see the work in progress. It is rare to get the chance to see the stages of a building conversion and seeing the building taken back to its bones, warts and all, will allow people to really appreciate the work and care being invested in this landmark site. Feeling the ripple of excitement and anticipation from the participants makes you see things differently, through their eyes, as they begin to share the vision for the Museum of Making
Back to the face mask then; it fits properly so on to the next step. Next week I will be collecting my goggles, steel capped boots ( this is not a fashionable look) and various tools from the site manager, I will remember the health and safety training and I will start cleaning bricks with other volunteers, fuelled no doubt by the custard creams without which no Museum meeting or training session seems complete. When the Silk Mill re-opens I will be able to take my grandchildren and know that somewhere in this amazing building are the bricks that grandma cleaned – and they may just have my name on them.
So ....volunteering. Volunteering is your gift of time to others. An opportunity to use old skills and to develop new ones, to share experiences, laughter and fun with others, to meet people of all ages who will surprise you with the depth and breadth of their knowledge, to learn from experts who can convey both information and their enthusiasm for their subject and to be part of a community that is bringing something of tremendous value to Derby.
Blog written by wonderful Co-production Volunteer - Alice Burns.
Volunteers Week (1st - 7th June) is an annual celebration which acknowledges the fantastic contribution millions of volunteers make across the UK. At Derby Museums we want this opportunity to thank the volunteers from each of our Museums. If you’d like to volunteer or find out more about more about it - visit our website https://www.derbymuseums.org/support/getinvolved
Leonardo da Vinci; A Life in Drawing : The Royal Collection Trust at Derby Museum & Art Gallery
Next year marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death and to celebrate this The Royal Collection Trust has a National exhibition of 144 of Leonardo's drawings at 12 spaces Nationally. I have been commissioned to be the Artist in Residence for the Leonardo exhibition that will be at Derby Museum & Art Gallery. My installation will be responding to the extraordinary anatomical elements of Leonardo's work and scientific objects in the Museum's collection, creating large scale intricate evolved anatomical beings that are inspired by Leonardo's daring to dream that in drawing, anything is possible and could happen in the future.
