Harris Museum & Art Gallery – Discover Preston Learning & Access Officer

Maternity cover

INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES

Background

This post was created as part of the creation of the & Art Gallery’s new history gallery, Discover Preston, and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The history collection is one of the Harris’ core collections, alongside the fine art and decorative art collections.

A phased refurbishment of the museum and art gallery has been underway for some years – we opened a new ceramics and glass gallery in 2008, the fine art gallery was redisplayed in February 2011 and new lighting enhances the costume gallery which currently features Stitches in Time, a display of quilts and quilting. We also offer a vibrant programme of temporary exhibitions, ranging from British and international contemporary art shows to touring exhibitions to those based on our own collections. Temporary exhibitions over the past few years include Industrial Revolutionaries, which used key characters in Preston’s history to trial some of our ideas for the new history gallery; Enchanted Worlds, an exhibition of art about fairy tales which combined a family-friendly approach with significant loans from around the country; and Current, a new media art exhibition to promote and develop contemporary collecting of digital work.

The Harris has a strong and varied programme of participatory activities using our collections and exhibitions for a wide range of audiences, including families, schools, young people, community groups, students and people with disabilities. Much of the programme is co-ordinated by Learning and Access staff – assisted by colleagues across the museum staff and our large volunteer team. The Learning and Access teams also work on the development of exhibitions, the creation of partnerships with local people and stakeholders, consultation and other projects to promote access to our collections and services. We are committed to the principles of Inspiring Learning for All www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk.

The Harris Museum & Art Gallery is part of Preston City Council’s Community and Business Services Department. It is based in a Grade I listed building at the heart of Preston city centre, which also houses library and community history services run by County Council.

The Harris was created thanks to a large bequest by Edmund Harris, an exemplar of 19th century philanthropy. It was designed by James Hibbert in a classical style, and completed in 1893. It is one of only three Grade I listed buildings in Preston and is an iconic symbol of the city overlooking the Market Square. Pevsner described the Harris as '…one of the most remarkable Victorian public buildings of Northern England …It comes off entirely and is a monument to the town as well as a powerful demonstration of the arts it wishes to serve.' (North Lancashire, 1969, p196).

The Harris was a member of the North West Hub of museums until the conclusion of the original Renaissance in the Regions programme and as a result underwent several years of considerable visitor-focussed change and development. This has had a positive impact across our service including visitor services, collections care and display, learning and access, marketing, and staff development.

The new gallery opened in July 2012 in time for Preston Guild – a civic celebration going back to medieval times. Preston has the only surviving Guild celebration in the country, which takes place every 20 years. Originally an annual recording of trading rights and civic status, the Guild has evolved into a week of festival activities – the 2012 Guild included processions, a Vintage Guild festival in Park, the city recreated in cake, concerts, music alongside traditional civic events.

The new Discover Preston gallery

The gallery focuses on the Harris’ history collections, which include social and industrial history, archaeology, photography from 1850 onwards, social history, numismatics and small collections of ancient history and ethnography. They range in date from prehistory to the present day and include 19th-century collections assembled by Preston's learned societies such as the Institute for the Diffusion of Knowledge or by Preston explorers.

Highlight objects include the 12,000 year old Poulton elk and the weapons found with its skeleton, which are the earliest evidence of human occupation of North West England, part of the Viking Cuerdale hoard, and the model of Horrockses Yardworks, the biggest mill complex in Europe in 1913. The interpretation of the mill model and other displays draws on early 20th century film of Preston held on behalf of the city council in local and national film archives, and oral histories and archive material. Paintings and objects relating to Preston's history from the fine art, ceramics and costume collections are also displayed in the new gallery.

Preston was a key settlement at the first crossing point of the , giving it a strategic position on the route from London to Scotland and between the Irish Sea and the Lancashire hinterland. As a result, Romans and Vikings left hoards and other evidence, armies fought key battles during the Civil War and the Jacobite Risings, and Preston became the region's market and county town. Richard Arkwright was a Preston man and his invention of the water frame led to the revolution in the cotton industry in which Preston became a world leader.

Preston was the first town to be lit by gas outside London, it was where the teetotal movement was founded in 1832, and was the first home of the Church of the Latter- day Saints in Britain which chose Preston for its first mission to Britain in 1837, and it is still a place of Mormon pilgrimage. The radical politician Henry 'Orator' Hunt was Preston's MP, Engels and Marx believed the people's revolution would break out in Preston, and Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell created novels around the 1853 Preston lock-out strike. The city is now a multi-cultural, multi-faith city whose heritage deserves to be better known. Preston was chosen to be England’s Jubilee city in 2002.

In the 2010 People's Panel survey, over 33% of Preston residents had visited the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in the last 12 months – a substantial proportion in the timescale. Further research outside the museum echoed that proportion, with about 20% of respondents having visited in the last month. This report concluded that 'What has emerged from the qualitative research most strongly is how passionate local people are about Preston’s history. Although Preston could be said to 'sit in the shade' of more obviously historic towns and cities, the people who live and work there, as well as the many foreign visitors who were interviewed, clearly value Preston’s own heritage and see the Harris Museum & Art Gallery as a highly prized 'jewel in the crown'.'

Our ambition for the new Discover Preston gallery was to create innovative displays and interpretation that connect people to our collections, the city and the wider heritage, by revealing the stories behind them and provoking thought and discovery.

We are doing this by maintaining the following aims throughout the project from development to delivery of activities in the new gallery:

• The needs and interests of our target audiences are identified and addressed in the displays. • The history gallery enhances and facilitates learning for all ages. • Sophisticated design and selection draws visitors to objects they may previously have ignored or not fully understood. • The gallery is people-focused. • Discovery and investigation of the collections are at the core of visitors’ experience. • The displays encourage debate and expression of people’s views in a dialogue with the museum. • Access in its widest sense is fundamental to the history gallery. • The history gallery is a bright, open space that respects and enhances the architecture. • The displays make links with the historic views through the windows and bring the outside in – and take the inside out. • Interactives – both manual and ICT – are chosen and developed for maximum interpretative gain. • The new history gallery strives to achieve a new approach to the interpretation of local history collections. • The displays facilitate links between the Harris Museum and Library collections and expertise. • The gallery is functional, practical and sustainable. • The gallery provides for the best possible levels of collection care, balanced with accessibility.

The Activity Plan created for our successful HLF bid identifies a wide range of learning and participatory activities covering the pre-opening period and for the following three years. These range from film projects to gallery resources, from family workshops to citywide trails, from live interpretation to memory sharing – taking place in the gallery, around the Harris, across the city and online. The Discover Preston Learning & Access Officer co-ordinates these activities and works with colleagues, volunteers and partners to deliver specific projects – all with the aim of bringing Preston’s heritage to life for and with local people and visitors.

Since opening, over 70,000 people have visited Discover Preston and many have taken part in activities – from Time Explorers workshops to Meet…a selection of characters represented in the gallery. Criteria for the changing display case have been agreed with a new steering group and the proposals for the first displays are being developed. New resources and trails have been developed, tested and delivered with the help of volunteers and target audiences as consultees.

See www.harrismuseum.org.uk for more background and information on our wider activities and http://www.harrismuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/7-new-history-gallery for information and pictures of the gallery.

If you love history and want to carry on the work of encouraging others to discover the evidence of Preston’s past that is all around us, we’d love to hear from you.

Shortlisting for this post will be based on the Employee Specification attached. Candidates should ensure that their application addresses the specified criteria fully and demonstrates how they fulfil the listed requirements for the post. Please do not send a general CV.