: Museums, Exhibitions and Events

We would like to offer volunteers the opportunity to get involved in caring for the museum collections on open display in the historic houses. We have a huge number of objects, including items made from pottery, glass, textiles, paper, wood and leather, all of which need constant care and repair.

We plan to use traditional housekeeping techniques as well as modern conservation methods to help keep our collection looking good.  No previous experience is required, all training will be provided.

New facilities are also being created for our housekeeping volunteers, providing a comfortable area to work as well as relax.

If you are interested in joining us, please follow this link to the application form and we look forward to hearing from you.
This is a pilot project so even if the initial days we offer are not suitable, please still register your interest as more opportunities will arise in the future.

We are currently recruiting housekeeping volunteers at St.Fagans to help look after the displays in the historic houses and Castle. This is a new scheme that is open to anyone who would like to get involved and learn more about traditional housekeeping techniques. Many of which still have a use today, such as using natural herbs and flowers to repel moths from precious woollen jumpers.

With your help we would also like to enhance the interpretation of the buildings by putting more of the collections on display and reintroduce traditional crafts to create replica items, such as rag rugs, baskets and wicker carpet beaters.

Training will be provided, so no previous experience is required, all we ask in return is a few hours of your time a week.  This is a pilot project, so even if the days currently on offer are not suitable please do still get in contact and register your interest.

As part of the project we have converted one of the cottages at Llwyn yr Eos farm into a base for housekeeping volunteers, with studios and a comfortable place to relax.

If you are interested in becoming a housekeeping volunteer please follow this link and we look forward to hearing from you.

A peregrine chick has been spotted in the nest on the clock tower of City Hall Cardiff. It appears that there is only one chick this year but after last year's breeding failure this is great news.

Why not follow how the chick gets on by watching our Peregrine cam on National Museum Cardiff or follow up dates via the @CardiffCurator Twitter page.

A lot of people wander around exhibitions with phones in their pockets or handbags. We decided to utilise this idea and serve up a Wi-Fi audio tour for the Chalkie Davies: the NME Years exhibition (9 May - 6 September 2015) - the museum has a web-server and there is Wi-Fi broadcasting in the exhibition gallery, allowing us to give it a whirl. 

• We wanted to give access to the maximum number of people with phones from this decade (HTML5 compatible devices). 
• We didn’t want an ‘app' because it creates a lot of hoops for developers and the museum to jump through, plus visitors probably don't want excessive fuss when entering an exhibition especially as they might only use it for five minutes in total. 
• We didn’t want to bring in traditional audio tour guides because of the hire price for the museum and we weren't going to ask the visitors to pay, as it's free entry to the exhibition.
• We might want to use it again and would hope to do so with the minimum amount of technical fuss.

Free Wi-Fi but not sitting a Coffee Shop

Once the visitor has connected to the free Wi-Fi audio tour ‘Chalkie' the Wi-Fi capture software will direct them to the correct web page with the name of the exhibition and a choice of languages (see picture 1). All is going well. 

Language Choice

The english audio tour was written and recorded by Chalkie Davies and his team - it provides his personal insights into each of the photographs on display and some back stories. The welsh audio version was recorded in-house by Rhodri Viney (recording and editing) and Telor Gwyn (voice), using the Chalkie Davies translated transcript.

Choose a Number between One and Nine

The visitor is given a choice of nine numbers, each matching a number on the gallery wall which refers to a selection of photographs (see picture 2). Once the person selects one of these numbers the audio tour begins...

"Listen To What The Man Said"

For the best experience the visitor should have headphones, but it's not the end of the world if they don't, they can still listen through their devices' built-in speaker, although this can look and feel a little awkward. Alternatively they could hand over £1.50 for headphones in the museum shop downstairs.

If they don’t want to walk around with a mobile phone protruding from their head, or leave the exhibition and come back in again to buy headphones downstairs, or find that their mobile phone has a low battery percentage - there is a printed version of the audio tour available within the gallery. They are the same words.

A Perfect Circle

I used to have an analogue watch, but I left it accidentally next to the squash courts in the University - if anyone picked it up, could they hand it back please? Anyway, time can be measured within a circle. I like circles, so I built a large circle to indicate the progress of the audio track playing. The animated graphic uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), which meant the page avoided the usual graphical software - it's all written in code: HTML5, javascript and CSS [Well, I find it mildly exciting] (see picture 3 and 4).  

Pressing the circle will pause the audio. If the visitor listening to the audio tour wants to change to another number they can press the ‘Home’ button and the page will scroll up to the nine numbered keypad again. Another loop, of sorts…and repeat.

Before we go any further, maybe we could pause for a short film clip...  

Additional Details You Might Enjoy 

• The gallery has a capacity of 40 people at one time.
• There are two Wi-Fi hubs at each end of the gallery broadcasting wireless-N.
• A web-server streaming the audio.
• Each of the audio tracks are compressed to less than 2MB (MP3).
• It takes less than ten seconds to download the whole MP3 on a iPhone 5S and the audio plays almost immediately.
• We’ve tested it with various phones including one of the first Android audio HTML5 compatible phones (Gingerbread 2.3.6 ~ circa 2011) and Windows 8 phones.
• If the device is not capable of displaying a SVG there is a fallback to similar looking GIFs.

Media Monitoring

The web-server records each time a track is requested. Therefore, we will have some data to indicate how much the audio tour is being used - thinking about it, we shoud gather additional information about the type of browser requesting the audio (it's a closed network so we can't involve Google Analytics, which is the usual goto reference for 'what kind of computer has visited the website recently'). We will monitor things during the exhibition and conduct evaluation once it has closed. 

Keith Harrison's superb installation Mute in Fragile? focuses on the viewer/ visitors interacting with the work. From seeing yourself reflected in gold tiled surface of the work to walking around the huge installation in the gallery to spinning a vinyl on the deck.

The "aim" of this installation is to make the slip in the speakers break down and discover what happens to the sounds: a voyage of discovery as much for the artist and the museum as the exhibition is for the visitor!

Records are played on one or both of the decks in the gallery which are attached to the main body of the installation, the music then sounds through a wall of dried slip (dried liquid clay) filled speakers, which crack and crumble as the music reverberates through them. Keith supplied several vinyl's for people to play on the decks of Mute. All records feature brass and horns and are ready to be used on shelving at the back of the gallery.

However he was also keen to encourage people to bring in their own records to be played in the galleries, and over the last few weeks we've noticed that the number of records seem to be growing!

Originally starting at 14, the number of vinyl's has grown to 18 (one was being played as the image was taken!). People seem to be leaving records in the space for others to enjoy!

If you want to experience this incredible installation why don't you bring in a record to play on Mute and contribute to this installation?

It may be some way off but a date to put in your diary is Keith Harrison's "In Conversation" on July 19th: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/cardiff/whatson/?id=7959

Also Spillers is hosting a late night event tomorrow (the 28th June!): http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/cardiff/whatson/?id=7848