Penlee House Gallery and Museum: Connecting with the Local Community

位于西康沃尔主要博物馆的Penlee House画廊和博物馆，其使命是通过展览、活动方案和教育活动外联方案与当地社区接触。PHGM非常成功地完成了其使命，在其画廊空间滚动举办了一系列展览，但认为其社会历史画廊的陈列陈旧，缺乏智力上的连贯性，过于僵化，无法与该地区的历史和其他利益集团建立联系。拟议的知识转移项目将使博物馆能够在几个方面改善其社会历史陈列馆。首先，通过将最近由维多利亚县康沃尔历史研究所完成的关于Penwith社区的研究的材料和见解告知重新展示，博物馆的社会历史展厅的主要展示将与其邻近地区的学术研究保持同步。妇幼保健中心的研究提供了关于当地社会经济结构的大量信息，并改进了研究相对孤立、社会经济基础狭窄的社区的理论方法。许多经验信息将在VCHC自己的项目和出版物中得到充分利用。该项目还包含公共历史中关于博物馆实践的专业知识，特别是关于博物馆与观众之间的互动。该团队还与埃克塞特大学、康沃尔校区(UECC)和康沃尔的博物馆/遗产部门之间的其他知识转移活动有直接联系，显然可以从这些平行的倡议中吸取经验教训，这将对本项目有价值。创建一个具有这种兴趣组合的知识转移团队将使Penlee House能够在项目管理重新展示时真正意识到潜在问题可能发生在哪里，制作最新的学术展示，并能够选择一系列策略来与当地观众互动，这些策略从公共历史的最新思维中获得了信息。这一点尤其重要，因为博物馆试图通过创建一个滚动的展示计划来满足它有理由相信是高度细分的当地观众，以接连接触那个“市场”的不同组成部分。这一战略在博物馆活动的画廊方面发挥了非常有效的作用，但到目前为止，博物馆目标受众中具有广泛历史兴趣的部分的反应令人失望。知识传授团队可以帮助博物馆提供非常广泛的新材料，特别是口述历史，以及关于西康沃尔独特社会经济结构发展的更深层次的历史背景。团队中的公共历史学家可以帮助对观众和参观者进行研究，以扩展博物馆已经开展的工作(UECC公共历史专业的学生也可以帮助开展一些活动)。该小组还与历史学家(广义的)和该县的博物馆和工业遗产地之间的其他知识转移工作有着极其密切的联系，并可以利用这些经验来确保该项目的成功管理。在项目结束时，博物馆将进行重新展示，并为其社会历史展厅以及营销和受众研究制定一项改变功能的计划，以使其能够最大限度地发挥这种重新展示的吸引力。在工作人员方面，UECC的公共历史学家将加强与康沃尔博物馆部门的联系，并为其本科生建立一个正在进行的营销/项目工作网站。历史学院是该学院的一部分，它将越来越多地努力向外看康沃尔的经济和社会复兴，这是其使命的重要组成部分。

Penlee House Gallery and Museum in the leading museum of West Cornwall and has a mission to engage with the local community, which it undertakes through its exhibits, its events programme and its outreach programme of educational activities. PHGM is extremely successful in meeting its mission with the rolling programme of exhibitions in its gallery space but believes that the display of its social history gallery is dated, lacks intellectual coherence and is too inflexible to enable it to connect with the historical and other interest groups of the area. The proposed knowledge transfer project will enable the Museum to improve its social history gallery in several ways. First, by informing the re-display with material and insights drawn from the recently finished study by the Victoria County History of Cornwall of the communities of Penwith, the museum's main displays in its social history gallery will be brought up to date with the academic study of its immediate region. The VCHC study generated abundant information about the socio-economic structure of the local area and sharpened theoretical approaches to the study of relatively isolated communities with narrow socio-economic bases. Much of the empirical information will be under-utilised in the VCHC's own projects and publications. This project also contains specialist knowledge from Public History on museum practice, especially on the interaction between museums and their audiences. The team also has direct links to other knowledge transfer activity between the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus (UECC) and the museum/heritage sector in Cornwall, and it is clear that lessons can be learned from these parallel initiatives that will be of value to this project.The creation of a knowledge transfer team with this combination of interests will enable Penlee House to project manage the redisplay with a real awareness of where potential problems are likely to occur, produce the most academically up-to-date displays and be able to select a range of strategies for engaging with their local audiences that are informed by recent thinking in Public History. This is especially important given the Museum's attempt to meet what it justifiably believes to be a highly segmented local audience through the creation of a rolling programme of displays to engage successively with different components of that 'market'. This strategy has worked very effectively with the Gallery side of the Museum's activities but has hitherto produced disappointing responses from those parts of the Museum's target audience that have broadly historical interests. The Knowledge Transfer Team can help to supply the Museum with a very broad range of new materials, notably oral histories, and a much deeper historical background on the development of the unique socio-economic structures of West Cornwall. The Public Historian in the Team can assist with help on research on audiences and visitors to extend that which the Museum already undertakes (and it is possible that UECC Public History students can help in carrying out some of this activity). The Team also has exceptionally close links with other knowledge transfer work between historians (broadly defined) and museums and industrial heritage sites in the county and can bring this experience to bear to ensure that the project is managed successfully. At the end of the project, the Museum will have a redisplay and a programme of changing features for its Social History gallery and marketing and audience research that will enable it to maximise the attractiveness of this redisplay. The Public Historians at UECC will, on the staff side, have enhanced contacts with the Cornish museum sector and a site for ongoing marketing/project work for its undergraduates. The School, of which History forms part, will add to its growing bid to look outwards to the regeneration of the economy and society of Cornwall, an important part of its mission.