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Letters in Lockdown – A series of bulletins written during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic by Museums Officer Joanne Turner for our dispersed museum volunteers and seasonal staff

Part 2: 13 May – 3 June 2020

13 May

I don’t think I have many museum related updates for you this week. Most of the curatorial team (East and West) met last week for a catch-up (via Microsoft Teams – we are not allowed to use Zoom on Council equipment). It was good to see everyone’s faces again. We are starting to have conversations about how we manage the return to work and the welcoming of our visitors once more. Lydia has concerns about the pest traps and environmental monitoring in our buildings. She routinely goes to each venue to check them and download the data – some are about due for a visit. Hopefully the visitor services staff looking after our buildings will be able to get them safely to her.

I’ve been reading about several local communities who are looking after each other. New Abbey even featured in a national newspaper in an article written by one of our local reporters, Sharon Liptrott. She has produced quite a few articles about our museums over the years. Elizabeth lives in New Abbey and sent me a photograph of herself and her cousin – taken by a neighbour when everyone was out on their doorsteps marking VE Day (the banner says happy birthday – but that’s another story).

Elizabeth told me it was a lovely day. There was a great display of flags, bunting, etc. all around the village - you can see the shop display in the background. One neighbour had an old banner which read “God Save The King”. Edie and I sat on our bench in the garden for most of the day - doing puzzles. Edie cheats though because the ones she was doing from The Scotsman (courtesy of our friend, who pops them through the door) publish the answers! The Herald doesn't do that!

The nursing home near Siobhan also marked VE Day with the residents. Staff and visitors dressed up as service personnel, Churchill and landgirls. There was a piper and lots of balloons and bunting. Mr McEwan took photos (to be added to our museum collection), then the staff put their PPE on and helped the residents to tables for tea and cake whilst relatives waved from the pavement. Passing cars hooted. Siobhan says it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened here for months.

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Meanwhile, thanks to our Seasonal Attendant, JoAnne McKay, we flew the flag in Sanquhar on VE Day. Here’s a photograph from JoAnne.

I asked JoAnne to tell me what she has been doing while the museums are closed and she reported back: I've been redeployed from my usual Seasonal post in the museums service, and now I'm checking on Sanquhar Tolbooth Museum each fortnight as well as undertaking a completely different role - working remotely for the Council Contact Centre. I'm based at Thornhill Library, and the job involves taking incoming calls to the main Council phone number. You can probably imagine how varied the calls can be! My husband is busy, as he's in the Scottish Ambulance Service, and I've got my twin sons at home. Sadly, they've missed taking their Highers. They are keeping themselves busy with learning online, and I am roping them into a succession of mad artistic schemes. Our latest is a Film, and Artists' Talk, for the Stove Network, which you can see online here: https://thestove.org/homegrown/perseverance/ We have also made Memory Jars, to depict what we’ve missed during Lockdown, and I put Dumfries Museum windmill inside mine!

I received a request for a picture of Lydia’s cat helping her. I think these two images illustrate nicely a couple of our moods in lockdown. He is called Link and is just over two years old now. Lydia says Link isn’t the best of helpers – he either wants to play outside or sleep! I know some people prefer dogs. Here’s an image Derek took outside Iceland for the museum’s Covid-19 collecting project. It illustrates rather well the themes of essential shopping, social distancing and daily exercise. I think we are going to be seeing notices like this everywhere for quite some time.

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Finally, the rainbow trail continues. Thanks to Carolyn, the rainbow has moved on to Burns Street. Here’s Robert Burns House (top left window) and the Activity and Resource Centre next door (photographs courtesy of one of our regular museum visitors):

20 May

I’ve spent the last couple of days re-writing our Documentation Plan which is long overdue, so it’s nice to break off and write to you this morning. I’ve been trying to pull together summaries of “everything we’ve done” and “everything we need to do” regarding our documentation standards and procedures – complicated by an upgrade in the standards, and our recent migration from Texpert to Adlib and all that entails. I can see we have made some good progress, thanks to your input and that of my colleagues. We have to decide what our main documentation priorities are going to be for the immediate and longer-term future – and how we are going to achieve that…!

Lydia has been able to collect her data (mentioned last week) from the Robert Burns Centre. It was the first time she had been over that way in a while – and look at the photograph she took – the river is so low.

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I’m going to take a short walk down to the Cluden river this lunchtime so I’ll be able to see how low it is at the moment. I’m collecting some items from Tom – he got them for me from the museum when I realised I need them for work. It will be the first time I have seen a museum colleague in person for nine weeks, although I did have a chat with Andy our Council’s Archaeologist in Tesco one evening recently. He told me he’s working from home too, and even busier than normal with planning applications.

Some of you will remember our Canadian intern, Carlie? She smiled every time I used the word “fortnight” as it sounded such an old-fashioned term to her. Well, I’ve already added “furlough” to that list and now, have you noticed when describing the wearing of PPE, we’re seeing “donning” and “doffing” coming into use again? Or maybe the NHS never stopped using these terms?

As you may have seen, the Council are issuing twice-weekly “CommUnity” newsletters. Yesterday the annual Mental Health Awareness Week was highlighted. Here is the basic advice being offered – although by now we might all be well practiced at it, I have to admit sometimes it takes an effort.

It’s a while since I reported on what Vivienne is doing – so I’ve asked her for an update and a photograph. She’s sent us a great view, with her black Labrador, Brodie, from one of their daily walks:

Vivienne writes: I’m keeping busy at home with admin duties - most of which don’t go away regardless of lockdown - and I’m also working on an Adlib task Joanne has given me. All our front of house staff check in with me on a daily basis so that I can keep absence records up to date and it’s reassuring to know that everyone is OK. I go into Dumfries Museum for a few hours once a week (when its Call Centre is not operating) to perform tasks and duties which simply can’t be done from home. I’ve been able to organise the purchase of paint and varnish to enable JP to paint the outside railings and benches in our grounds and to varnish the floors inside the museum. As

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the museum is closed, the paint deliveries are coming to my home! I enjoy going into the museum although it seems very odd to be in the building on my own on a weekday in the middle of the summer season! The Adlib task relates to our postcard collection and involves checking and correcting the text which got a little garbled following the migration. I’ve finished Dumfriesshire and am now working through Kirkcudbrightshire. An early start to my days means that I can escape my computer for an hour in the afternoon to take my dog for a walk. I can’t believe that we haven’t been rained on once since lockdown began!

And here’s proof that improvements are happening in the grounds, as well as a view of the wildflower bed:

Also in the grounds of Dumfries Museum, I know Siobhan has been working on plans to get the “Old Mortality” shelter attended to – hopefully it can still happen this year. The “Incredible Edible” gardening people have been working on the top borders, too. Siobhan has had a bumper crop of salads, so has passed them on to the group for planting up. She told me “my weekend was spent potting up salads. I've attached an image of what I didn’t pot up - why did I think one person needed this many lettuces?”

Siobhan is carrying on a museum tradition as it used to be the Assistant Curator’s job to grow the bedding plants for the museum grounds! There was a lean-to shed up against the main hall and she recalls Elaine (our previous curator) finding a receipt for seeds.

I am on leave for the next couple of days. I should have been going to a music festival in North Cumbria. I’ll just have to picnic in the gazebo in our garden and listen to the CDs I bought at last year’s festival instead. We are working on Monday as it is not a Bank Holiday in Scotland – so I can catch up with you then.

27 May

It has been good to hear from some of you in the last couple of weeks. I hope everyone is still finding things to keep themselves distracted. I am already starting to look back and think “I could have done this” or “I should have done that”. The awful windy weather last weekend meant a couple of days

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indoors (apart from going out to rescue the gazebo every now and then!) so I started to tidy my home office shelves. Amongst other things, I found folders full of out of date visitor attraction leaflets from all sorts of places. Most are now put aside for paper recycling but I did keep some to add to the museum collection!

We are seeing lots of people’s home office / spare room / attics on TV at the moment (and their ceilings or up their noses if they are not good at setting up their workstations) so I have become particularly aware of my own situation – the shelving is an angle of our house I never normally see! We had our second Arts and Museums team meeting yesterday – so I took a screen shot of some of the attendees, and you can see what I mean in the bottom right.

I think most people here are set up on their dining table or in a spare bedroom except Jaime (top right) who is basing herself in Stranraer Museum. You might not recognise everyone? Our manager, Rebecca Coggins is top left, Siobhan below. Then Fiona is top centre, Alex (Robert Burns Centre projectionist) is in the centre with West Curator Anne Ramsbottom below. Then Jaime (Access Officer in West) with the Film Officer, Alice below. You will recognise Lydia, lower right. Vivienne (and a few others) was there too but she does not have a camera in her setup – so she had to type rapidly in the margin if she wanted to say anything!

Our main topic for discussion yesterday was how we are planning to get the museums and galleries back up and running – and what measures we will have to put in place to make it safe for us and our visitors. The “Route Map” published by the Scottish Government last week indicates that museums

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will not be opening until the Phase 3 stage is reached – possibly around the same time they are aiming for some school classes to go back – but I think the dates are quite fluid – and the Council may have its own priorities which could delay what the museums can do.

Some of our venues are quite small so social distancing will be a challenge – we can put one-way systems in place for some, and of course we will have to remove the ‘handling’ items, dressing up, browse books etc for now. The front of house staff have been very helpful in putting forward ideas on what we could do.

The Cluden River at Newbridge – looking very low - when I had a walk down there last week.

I had a catchup with Fiona on Monday as she had been on leave for a couple of weeks – although she still kept up with our online (Facebook and Twitter) activity. She says: I did quite a lot in the garden and was scheduled for lockdown sheep shearing last week but it has been postponed until Wednesday. One of the pet lambs had really bad bloat on Saturday so I ended up sitting with her for hours – seems better now poor wee thing! A dose of bicarbonate of soda seemed to help.

So far, our online posts have a potential reach of over 90,000 viewers. Fiona asks, if you are able, to follow, like and share the museums Facebook posts it will help to keep our historic venues and collections in the public eye. I know some of you don’t have access to such things so here’s an example we posted on Facebook this week – Lady Devorgilla doing some Spring gardening amongst gorgeous violets:

Fiona has also publicised the first (of many) of our Blogs to appear on the museum’s new website. It was written by Tom and you can read it here: https://www.dgculture.co.uk/blog-posts/

Tomorrow evening we will be participating in the Twitter #LoveDandG hour which is focusing on the @VisitScotland #AWindowOnScotland campaign. Fiona will be posting images to help raise awareness of the beautiful scenery we have in Dumfries and Galloway. #LoveDandG hour is a monthly event on Twitter hosted by the people behind Solway Tours. Local businesses, cultural and historic venues and promoters such as Visit Scotland all participate in a mad hour of constant tweeting to flood Twitter and raise the profile of the region, its heritage, beautiful scenery and many attractions.

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Have you noticed how many bees and wasps there are around at the moment? Some of the shrubs in our garden are literally buzzing with activity. Siobhan’s Rhododendrons survived the windy weather and are in full bloom. Here’s a photo she sent to me:

03 June

This week we are celebrating Volunteers’ Week 2020 across Dumfries and Galloway. We are fortunate in the museums service that we have had volunteers working alongside us for many years now – enhancing the service we provide and increasing our ability to get things done. We are always grateful for the work that you do for us and are particularly missing you at this tricky time. Fiona posted a Facebook message on Monday which some of you may not have seen.

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And I was pleased to see in the Council’s “CommUnity” newsletter yesterday that Dave is one of the volunteers being highlighted.

I have calculated that for the year up to the end of March, we worked with 18 different museum volunteers and the amount of hours contributed was 1130 (I know this figure should be higher because some of you have done research homework for us as well). We do not know exactly when we will be able to resume our volunteer timetables, but we are working on a plan to re-open in stages – and of course we would not want you to come back until you felt it was safe for you to do so.

I am hearing from several sources that the public are starting to get out and about a bit more. Elizabeth tells me that the “easing” of lockdown meant that New Abbey village was inundated with cars, people and cyclists at the weekend. My husband reported seeing a queue of cars around the block, almost back to the bypass yesterday teatime for the McDonald’s drive-thru at Lochside!

Carolyn noted a change immediately last week:

I am looking out of the Robert Burns Centre window. The most striking change is that there are now small groups sunbathing and enjoying picnics – up until yesterday, it was limited mainly to people jogging or striding purposefully or cycling or dog- walking through the Mill Green. To reflect these tiny, very cautious steps which we are now trying, you can see my #SunriseForScotland in the OBH window.

Thanks probably to the People’s Project, the planters at the Old Bridge House are looking great. Incredible Edible are also more than doing their bit in the Robert Burns Centre garden. And, of course, our gardeners have been keeping the grass down on the Mill Green.

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While we are thinking about the Old Bridge House Museum, here’s an update from Jane who would normally be on duty there throughout the summer: I have been spending my work days at home doing a very interesting research job. As many of you know, the Old Bridge House is filled with a wonderful selection of artefacts. A sort of “Cash in the Attic” meets “The Old Curiosity Shop” selection of household items from near the start of the house’s life to fairly recent times.

Visitors, I notice, love the familiar items that they remember from their own childhood. Younger visitors often need a little explanation to bring things like mangles and the old kitchen range to life – then there are the more unusual items. I like being able to explain to people what they are, and when or where they were made, so last year I started making notes which I am now compiling into a set of explanations for as many of these items as I can. Some days are fascinating and I need to spend time editing down all the information to a succinct one page. Other days, just nothing comes up of any great interest. Who would have thought that there would be so little on the history of the electric fire for example? I try to make sure you get the fine line between just enough information and boring people to death with everything you know about everything in the place! I miss being in the museum and bringing the house alive for visitors.

I wonder if those electric fires were once used to keep the museum warm? Christine, our Annan Museum attendant has also been missing her museum:

I am due to go into Annan Museum on Monday for the routine checks. To be honest it’s looking very sad and lonely and really needing its spring clean. It actually makes me fair sad when I go in... funny how you get attached to a place. I’m keeping in touch with our Annan volunteers and everyone is doing well at the moment. My sewing machine is keeping going – I must be doing OK as Lydia has offered me more costume covers to do! I am looking forward now to a visit to my daughter’s garden in Lochmaben tomorrow morning and seeing my grandchildren again instead of FaceTime!

I hope everyone has been able to enjoy the nice spell of weather recently – it did feel unusual to have some heavy rain last night.

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Joanne Turner is a Museums Officer based at Dumfries Museum. She works with our museum volunteers on their collections and documentation projects. Originally from County Durham, Joanne worked for museums in Cumbria before joining the Dumfries team in 1997.

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