So we've been working hard on pulling together all the different parts of the exhibition. The Interpretation team (Leanne, Amy, Helen and Stef) have been researching all the objects on display, finding out about their uses and origin as well as some interesting stories about how the objects came to be in the Museum's collection.
The next stage was to take all the research and turn it into interesting and readable panels. The team had already decided to group together the items into a number of themes, they were...
The stories and symbols with in the textiles,
How the objects came to be in the collection,
What the objects said about the wearer and when they might have been worn,
Objects that we used for our animation project
These also needed some snapper titles and a brief piece of information to go with them. We put out a brief for someone to work alongside the group who had experience of writing interpretation for museums and of working with groups of young people. We were very lucky to be recommended Amy Barnes who has worked with Leicester Museum's young people's panel and has an extensive knowledge of Chinese textiles.
Amy is now working with the group to write up the text. The first task was to work on the titles for out themes, after a bit of a brain storm and thinking about the key messages we came up with...
Symbols and Stories,
Collecting China ??? (still working on this one!),
Style and Status,
and
The Dragon and the Heavenly peach (which is the name of our animation)
The group have now started to write the individual labels for the objects.