Revealed: New plans for The Silk Mill after £16.4m transformation
We’re delighted to share the first design ideas and plans for the brand new Derby Silk Mill - Museum of Making. You can visit us at The Silk Mill on Thursday 27 April 2017, 3-9pm and Saturday 29 April 2017, 1-5pm, to see the plans, speak to staff and volunteers about the project and share your thoughts. We’d love to know what you think!
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Here are Sally’s final drawings of her residency during this Development Phase. This has been a period of intense work to finalise the design concepts for the building and exhibitions - ready for our June submissions to Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England. During April we shared these concepts with our visitors and communities, receiving wonderful feedback as a result. Workshop Supervisor Steve also managed to squeeze in a Furniture Jam!
Having Sally with us during the last year has been a fascinating experience for us as a team. The personal perspectives she has captured through her observations have been incredibly thought-provoking. Sally’s voice, as seen through her pens and talent, give us a unique viewpoint on what has been a hugely intense period of development for the Museum of Making. A period where many things have happened, questions have been asked, decisions have been made (and changed), people have collaborated… all helping to make the Museum of Making. In the future, we will look back through this unique archive of work and remember what an engaging, challenging and hugely fulfilling time this last year has been. We hope you agree. http://www.sallyjanethompson.co.uk/
The Silk Mill will be closed on a regular basis after Saturday 29 April 2017. The building is still available to hire through our Business Hub team, will be open for Derby Mini Maker Faire in October 2017, FIGMENT Derby 2017 in August 2017 and for Poppies: Weeping Window in June 2017.
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Situated in the centre of Derby, The Silk Mill is currently undergoing a process of significant development to reinvent the Silk Mill for the 21st century through the creation of Derby Silk Mill – Museum of Making.
The new museum will display fascinating items from Derby’s rich industrial history, celebrating the makers of the past; and will be designed to empower makers of the future through inspirational environments for learning programmes and activities. The project is timed to be completed in 2019/20 and is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Derby City Council and Arts Council England.
The Silk Mill’s 3D scanning programme was still relatively new at the beginning of 2016 and my role in it even more so, having just recently being introduced to the software and started to lead on the development of this programme of work. When I first started learning how to 3D scan objects I got really frustrated with it at points because I would spend hours on a scan only to have it end up looking like this:
Rather than this:
Looking back now, I can see that they actually look quite interesting, but they really weren’t what I was going for! By February I’d started to get a real handle on the scanning and the process of the resulting scans so we were in a position to look for some help. This is when the amazing Lucia came to one of our 3D scanning sessions at the Museum and Art Gallery and asked about the possibility of volunteering with us, which was brilliant because she really pushed the 3D scanning we were doing forwards, both in terms of the amount of objects being scanned and the complexity which can now be captured in the scans themselves. Lucia was also fundamental to the development of the way we began to share our models as she introduced us to Sketchfab. Sketchfab is a 3D image sharing online platform which is used by a fair number of heritage institutions to share 3D images of their collections and we thought it would be good place to being sharing ours. There are thirty images and counting on the Derby Silk Mill Sketchfab page, which can be viewed here, and we’re uploading more on a fairly regular basis.
3D Scan of a Brick Mould from the collection
We’ve also been carrying on with 3D scanning as part of the public programming and it has remained a really popular way for people to interact with our collections, both through the physical object and the model which is being created. 3D scanning has been a regular feature on the Hub and has been demonstrated as part of other events such as Collections Revealed, Maker Faire 2016 and as part of the Derby Museums stall to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Derby’s Market Hall. These were all really interesting and varied experiences and really showed the potential of 3D images to engage people.
Two of our lovely volunteers at the Market Hall event
One of the main large projects that we’re working on at the moment is a 3D image of the model railway. Lucia is using a mix of photogrammetry and scanning to capture the model which is over 5 meters in length and over 1.5 metres wide.
Lucia in the model railway
These larger and more complex objects definitely present challenges, but they also illustrate just how far we’ve come in our experience of 3D imaging in the last 12 months, as this time last year capturing either of these objects would never have been attempted. Now they not only seem possible to capture but we are also looking forward to what we might be able to do with these scans when they are completed. In the future 3D scanning will play an important role in the interpretation of the Silk Mill’s inspiring collections, engaging people alongside the physical objects.
Bauman Lyons Architects – Makers in Residence
Introduction (1/5)
We’ve had a fantastic three months coproducing architectural ideas with Silk Mill visitors, volunteers and staff for transforming the Silk Mill into the Museum of Making. Taking the torch from Leach, who kickstarted the Re:Imagine programme with their excellent Art of Artefacts workshops, we continued to ‘up-size’ the scale of design thinking from the micro-scale of the object, its grouping and narratives, through to how we might tailor and craft surrounding spaces and atmospheres to enhance visitors’ experience and understanding of the Silk Mill’s collections.
Drawing on Silk Mill’s creative and experimental ethos, we devised a series of practical workshops that would invite collaborators of different ages and different interests to contribute their ideas and designs around the following questions:
- How might we design the museum spaces using the collection?
- How might we create a variety of different spaces for different collections?
- How might we select materials for building the museum inside and out?
- How might we refine the design of spaces by creating a full-scale prototype?
We’d love to share the diverse variety of responses that these questions provoked and introduce the lovely people we’ve met along the way.
You can view our whole workshop findings and summary report here.
- Matt, architect and Maker in Residence, discussing ideas with visitors in our first workshop.
- Erasmus students from the Netherlands pop in to take part in our workshop.
- Making mock-up of experimental spaces with Silk Mill’s volunteers.
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In November at The Silk Mill we held our first Silk Mill Conversations event - About Materials, an open discussion about the importance of materials in making. We were delighted to welcome speakers including, Zoe Laughlin from the Institute of Making and Dean Jackson from HUUB. Before it is carefully packed away ready for The Silk Mill development, the much loved Midland Model Railway ran for the last time. It was great to see so many people join us for this event.
These illustrations are created by our Artist-in-Residence, Sally Jane Thompson. Take a look at her work here.
We had a great September at The Silk Mill. Our Re:Imagine programme continued with Art of Artefacts workshops run by our exhibition design team Leach, family friendly fun session STEAM Tots and embroidery skills sharing in These Hands Were Made for Making workshops, inspired by 1930s textile artist, Rebecca Crompton. Also, The Silk Mill hosted Derby Comic Festival - a busy month!
Be part of the Design Team by getting involved in one of our workshops in November and December - click here to download the programme or visit our main website www.derbymuseums.org/whats-on/
We’ve been asking you ...
How might we create a variety of different spaces for different collections?
Last night, our project architects Bauman Lyons worked with visitors and volunteers to prototype and make spaces in response to objects. (Pictured L-R), Yun Wing from Bauman Lyons architects and Joe from Derby Makers look through the ‘u-bend’ part of their prototyped space!
Take part in the next workshop on Thursday 24 November, when we’ll be exploring ...
How might we select the materials for building the museum inside and out?
