Museum as meeting place - Multaka-Oxford

In March 2018 we started a project funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Collections Fund called 'Multaka-Oxford' here at the Pitt Rivers and at the Museum of History of Science. You can read more about Multaka on the Pitt Rivers website. The aim of the project is to create volunteer opportunities based around the museum and its collections.

We had a busy first few months doing outreach and building networks with some brilliant organisations who are working with us and supporting volunteers into the project. They include Connections, RefugeeResource, Asylum Welcome and Sanctuary Hosting. We are also greatly benefiting from the expertise of one of the museum’s ‘Community Ambassadors’ Nuha Abdo. There are now 13 active volunteers on the project who have given an amazing 164 hours of their time. 

Photo of team of Multaka-Oxford volunteers and staff in the Research Room
© Tammam Aboukerech

It is really important that the volunteers find roles in the museum that play to their strengths, skills and interests. The museum provides a really unique place for people to come and learn, engage with heritage and meet other people, whilst also gaining useful work experience and transferable skills. These first volunteers through the door have been incredibly patient with us as we have tried to get this right. In fact, last week we held the first Multaka Advisory Panel where we are seeking help from the volunteers and community partners to improve what we are doing.

One of the roles that volunteers have been doing is helping with collections research and documentation. We are in a unique situation that the items of textiles from the Middle East we are working on are newly gifted to the Museum by textiles collector Jenny Balfour Paul, and have not been accessioned yet. Volunteers are being involved from the very start of welcoming these objects into the museum. For example, Mohamed has been volunteering alongside Abigael to measure items and describe them as she enters these into the database.

Laying out textiles to be measured for database.
Dress from Bethlehem (2018.37.18) ©Pitt Rivers Museum

Tammam has been learning new skills in museum inventory photographs - learning how to take photos of the textiles to go into the database. He is also taking lots of wonderful photos of the project unfolding and beautiful close-up photos of objects he loves.You can see some more of Tammam's photos on the Multaka-Oxford tumblr site.

Close up of silk embroidery on chest panel of dress from Bethlehem (2018.37.18)
© Tammam Aboukerech

A number of volunteers have been doing research on the collections. Abdullah has been focusing on some items from Damascus and Aleppo to find out more about silk production in Syria. His research will be entered into the museum database to ‘enhance’ the object record. Niveen has also been finding out about a collection of face masks from Oman. You can read some of her research in her blog.

Face mask from Sultanate of Oman (2018.37.22) 
© Pitt Rivers Museum 

We have also been running monthly ‘Collections Workshops’ for volunteers and staff. At these sessions we bring out items of the collections and a big group sits around the table in the research room and discusses them. It is a social event and a chance for everyone to get up close to objects. The museum also gains some amazing insights and knowledge during these sessions.

Workshop with volunteers and staff discussing items in the collection.
Here we are looking at a silk ikat coat from Aleppo in Syria (2018.37.2).
© Tammam Aboukerech.

And with all this knowledge and personal experience being shared here inside the museum, we are also finding ways to get this all out to a wider audience. We had a stall at Oxford Mela where volunteers talked with people about the objects. You can read Mohamed's blog about the experience on our tumblr site

The Multaka-Oxford stall at Oxford Mela 2018
 ©Pitt Rivers Museum

We also held an event in June during 'PittFest' where volunteers spoke with lots of people about some of the textile pieces they had been looking at.

Abdullah talks with visitors about a Syrian dress
during an event in June 2018 ©Pitt Rivers Museum

Volunteers have also been busy writing and uploading blogs, photos and – shortly – audio about the project on our tumblr page and tweeting on #MultakaOxford.

Our next steps will be training up volunteers as tour guides, creating a display of the textiles, running more events and building up the skills and capacity of the volunteer team. 

Next year we will be running a sharing event and symposium for museums people and other relevant sectors.  

Blog written by Rachel Harrison
Multaka Community Engagement and Volunteer Officer
Pitt Rivers Museum and Museum of the History of Science

Work Experience Placement at the Museum

Every year the Education team facilitates a certain number of work experience placements to enable young people to find out about work in a museum. Here a local student , Jasmine (15), reports on what she got up to during a week at Pitt Rivers...


"This last week I've been immersed in a different world. I am a GCSE history student, and arranged with the Pitt Rivers Museum to do work experience with them for a week.

"I particularly enjoyed photographing the Education Department's handling collection of textiles and masks. We were creating a database, so that researchers could search for and find objects. There were some fascinating and quirky masks, like these two from Indonesia (below):

Frog mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

Bird Mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

If the experience at the Pitt Rivers taught me anything, it's the power of objects. Looking at an object can tell you tons about the people who made it.

African Mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

African mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

 










"These two African masks (above) tell us about standards of beauty in parts of Africa. Just as we tattoo ourselves, these people cut into their skin and place inks into the cuts, leaving colourful scars behind. See in the scars on the forehead of the mask above. These were considered beautiful, and were a way of showing you were from a particular tribe. Elongated foreheads were a sign of class and beauty in Africa. As babies, our skull bones haven't fused together; so people can safely change the shape of the head.

"Preserving these fabrics can be very important too. The Pitt Rivers is sometimes used to help bring back arts that have died out. If particular weaving techniques have been forgotten, photos of these scarves could be very helpful.

Woven textile © Pitt Rivers Museum

Photographing the Education handling collection 
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Preparing objects to photograph 
© Pitt Rivers Museum

"But a great thing about the Pitt Rivers is how varied it can be. While my friend doing work experience in a bakery did the same thing every day, I had different jobs, almost every day. From opening the museum, to helping with crafts for primary school workshops, to writing this very blog post, my time at the Pitt Rivers Museum has been unforgettable."

Jasmine, work experience student, March 2016