Unleashing the Power of Your Collections

Musical instruments from the collection of the Royal Northern College of Music (Credit: Royal Northern College of Music)

This was a North West Renaissance in the Regions programme to provide funding and support for innovation in smaller museums in the region, my role was to provide advice to a diverse group of museums which included the Manchester Jewish Museum, the Museum of Manchester Regiment, the Royal Northern College of Music Library, the Ruskin Museum, Ambleside, and the South Ribble Museum. The projects presented varying challenges ie the digitisation of oral history interviews with holocaust survivors (taking them from audio cassettes to online), capturing stories relating to World War One soldiers, engagement with historic musical instruments through new recordings, an interactive display of Sir Donald Campbell’s Bluebird, and enabling a local museum with limited physical access to make available its collections electronically.