Objects of Inspiration
Louise McDermott
Community Engagement Officer, Royal Cornwall Museum
louise.mcdermott@royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk
Keywords: Young People, Audiences, Access, Interpretation, Design
Since 2007, The Royal Cornwall Museum has partnered with University College Falmouth on the mutually beneficial Objects of Inspiration project. The project both refreshes the museum’s galleries and provides a platform and structure for BA students’ professional development. In addition, the project facilitates the engagement of hard to reach Young People audiences (aged 16-24 years) for both partners.
Over course of the project, BA (Hons) Contemporary Crafts, Photography, Textile Design, Choreography, Spatial Design, and Digital Animation students have been given the opportunity to respond to the live brief of re-interpreting the museum’s collections in ways that will engage Young People: interpretations (in the main) by Young People, for Young People. Taking up this challenge, they have created a huge variety of refreshing interventions at the museum, focussing visitors’ attention on the objects of inspiration, whilst highlighting contemporary issues of particular interest to Young People: from transport to sexuality, the environment to fashion, music to internet bullying. The project took place both at the university and at the museum and enabled students to develop their own practice, whilst benefitting from exposure to and experience of museum procedures and ‘the museum as client’. Resultantly, some students have won national awards and several works have been permanently accessioned into the museum’s collections.
