Hands on History - thinking outside the box

Northampton Museum and Art Gallery has worked with five different artists to create new object handling resources for Northamptonshire adults and community groups. Funded by Renaissance East Midlands, the project developed eye-catching, visually stimulating boxes that reflect the artefacts held inside.

Forty artists wanted to get involved, but five were selected to develop resources on the following themes:

Crime and Punishment: looking at how Northampton’s policing through history. At first sight the new resource, made from iron, resembles an instrument of torture. It plays on the workings of handcuffs or thumbscrews and opens up, almost like a ribcage, to reveal trays of artefacts relating to the topic. David Tucker from Derbyshire was the artist.

Archaeology: this looks at materials and how they were used, and can possess functional and aesthetic design qualities at the same time. The resource is hand-carved from wood by Stroud artists Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowling and the exterior of the vessel is reminiscent to the idea of stratigraphy and layers of historic deposits.

The First World War: takes a human look at the First World War and the impact it had on soldiers and their families; the artefacts in the resource serve as poignant reminders of the sacrifices made. The box has been produced to resemble the torso of a soldier. Held together by magnets, it opens to reveal embroidered facts about human loss during the war. Every object has its own box, which is labelled with what the item is. Jane Hoodless, a sculptor from London, created this resource.

Shoes: Fit for Purpose (in partnership with Kettering Museum): Louise Evans from Leicestershire created this, inspired by shoes from Northampton’s designated  collection. The resource consists of three vintage chests, each one containing either men’s, women’s or children’s shoes. Each shoe is individually packaged to reflect its significance and history.

Moving Here audio globe in partnership with Northamptonshire Black History Association: this resource is the only one not using artefacts from Northampton’s collections. Daxa Parmar, a Northamptonshire artist, has created a decorated globe that opens up into six segments. Each segment represents a person and their oral history. The resource used interviews that had been collected by Northamptonshire Black History Association and discusses people’s experiences of migrating to Northampton from six countries (Bangladesh, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Liberia and Montserrat).

Northampton Museum has also worked in partnership with Tim Coley, a lecturer at the University of Northampton, to produce a film that will accompany the resources as they go out on loan. The film follows the progress of the artists as they produced their work and discusses the connections between art and history. This film will be officially launched at the University of Northampton on the 15 January 2008, accompanied by a display of all of the new resources.

The resources are now available on loan from Northampton Museum and Art Gallery.