: Climate Change

The People's Pledge

Valentine Gigandet, ACP, 25 February 2024

With the festive season upon us, it's important to consider the privilege it is to be able to celebrate in a time of major conflict and global issues and what part we can play that offers positive steps forward in supporting those most affected across the world.

Because of my background in character design and puppetry, I'm often interested in working on a human scale, perhaps by creating characters or puppets. That's why I thought of designing a workshop where participants create flat figures representing individuals making pledges. The idea was also that these figures could facilitate debates or conversations, symbolising our commitments and exploring scales and proportions. Initially, I even wanted to provide time and space within the workshop for participants to use their characters to discuss their pledges. Inspired by puppetry, participants would embody their characters and articulate their ideas, creating a sense of accountability and encouraging action.

When I think or talk about urgent topics like those that inspired the works exhibited at the Arts Mundi exhibition, I'm always mindful that real people are involved in these massive issues. These individuals might not always be engaged in politics, but they are inevitably affected by it.

While we may feel overwhelmed by the urgency and scale of these issues, as people, we can also use our voices and actions to make pledges - that is the thought behind the title of the workshop ‘People’s Pledges’.

When we did the workshop at Cardiff National Museum during February half term, conversations revolved around being kind to each other, protecting our environment, people protesting on the streets, the right to protest, being open to learning about other cultures, being kind to people in our support circle, anti-consumerism behaviours, and the climate crisis…

Originally designed for adults and intended for the LATES event at the museum, we were unsure about how children and families would respond… It was mostly successful, with some parents engaging in conversations with their children as they designed their characters. However, some parents opted not to participate, thinking that the workshop as mostly for children but the workshop was originally planned with adults in mind. This workshop is open to all ages and everyone is welcome to participate!

We hope to facilitate the workshop again, possibly in an outreach setting, as it creates a great opportunity to discuss how we can effect change and take action in our daily lives. Perhaps we could build a whole community of small characters making pledges marching towards action?!

From Student to Scientist

Kelsey Harrendence, 28 July 2021

The next steps in a Professional Training Year

It’s been a little while since my last blog post and since then there has been a lot of exciting things happening! The scientific paper I have been working on that describes a new species of marine shovelhead worm (Magelonidae) with my training year supervisor Katie Mortimer-Jones and American colleague James Blake is finished and has been submitted for publication in a scientific journal. The opportunity to become a published author is not something I expected coming into this placement and I cannot believe how lucky I am to soon have a published paper while I am still an undergraduate.

There are thousands of scientific journals out there, all specialising in different areas. Ours will be going in the capstone edition of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a journal which covers systematics in biological sciences, so perfect for our paper. Every journal has its own specifications to abide by in order to be published in them. These rules cover everything from the way you cite and reference other papers, how headings and subheadings are set out, the font style and size, and how large images should be. A significant part of writing a paper that many people might not consider is ensuring you follow the specifications of the journal. It’s very easy to forget or just write in the style you always have!

Once you have checked and doubled checked your paper and have submitted  to the journal you wish to be published in, the process of peer reviewing begins. This is where your paper is given to other scientists, typically 2 or 3, that are specialists in the field. These peer-reviewers read through your paper and determine if what you have written has good, meaningful science in it and is notable enough to be published. They also act as extra proof-readers, finding mistakes you may have missed and suggesting altered phrasing to make things easier to understand.

I must admit it is a little nerve wracking to know that peer reviewers have the option to reject all your hard work if they don’t think it is good enough. However, the two reviewers have been nothing but kind and exceptionally helpful. They have both accepted our paper for publication. Having fresh sets of eyes look at your work is always better at finding mistakes than just reading it over and over again, especially if those eyes are specialists in the field that you are writing in.

As you would expect, the process of peer-reviewing takes some time. So, while we have been waiting for the reviews to come back, I have already made great progress on starting a second scientific paper based around marine shovelhead worms with my supervisor. While the story of the paper isn’t far along enough yet to talk about here, I can talk about the fantastic opportunity I had to visit the Natural History Museum, London!

We are currently investigating a potentially new European species of shovelhead worm which is similar to a UK species described by an Amgueddfa Cymru scientist and German colleagues. Most of the type specimens of the latter species are held at the Natural History Museum in London. Type material is scientifically priceless, they are the individual specimens from which a new species is first described and given a scientific name. Therefore, they are the first port of call, if we want to determine if our specimens are a new species or not.

The volume of material that the London Natural History Museum possesses of the species we are interested in is very large and we had no idea what we wanted to loan from them. So, in order to make sure we requested the most useful specimens for our paper, we travelled to London to look through all of the specimens there. We were kindly showed around the facilities by one of the museum’s curators and allowed to make use of one of the labs in order to view all of the specimens. The trip was certainly worth it. We took a lot of notes and found out some very interesting things, but most importantly we had a clear idea of the specific specimens that we wanted to borrow to take photos of and analyse closer back in Cardiff. 

Overall, I can say with confidence that the long drive was certainly more than worth it! I’m very excited to continue with this new paper and even more excited to soon be able to share the results of our first completed and published paper, watch this space…

Thank you once again to both National Museum Cardiff and Natural History Museum, London for making this trip possible.

Coal and Climate

Jennifer Protheroe-Jones Principal Curator - Industry, 15 May 2020

While Wales is working hard to drive forward a positive climate agenda, with a target of 100% renewable electricity by 2035, our industrial past casts a long environmental shadow. Here Jennifer Protheroe-Jones, Principal Curator – Industry looks at our industrial history and its impact.

Wales was an early and unwitting contributor to climate change.

The 1851 Census showed that Wales was the first nation to have more people employed in industry than in agriculture, the important switch having probably occurred in the mid to late 1840s.

Wales was a notable international centre of industry in the mid 19th century, being one of the most important iron producing nations, and the centre of both the world copper and tinplate industries. Plentiful easily worked coal underpinned all these industries – to fuel furnaces, to power steam engines that drove machinery and locomotives that hauled raw materials and finished products.

An ocean of railway wagons loaded with coal in sidings adjacent to Roath Dock, Cardiff, awaiting shipment in March 1927. The initials on the wagons identify a range of major colliery companies: Burnyeat, Brown & Co Ltd; D.Davis & Sons Ltd; Nixon’s Navigation Coal Co Ltd; United National Collieries Ltd.

Welsh steam coal is ideally suited to steam-raising. It burns with relatively little smoke, produces limited amounts of ash and produces a great deal of heat. As it burns, steam coal fissures but does not crack into small pieces. The fissures allow the coal to burn from the inside as well as from the outside, considerably increasing the heat output and so increasing the steam-raising properties of the fuel. Because steam coal does not break into small pieces as it burns, it sits on top of the fire bars and burns, rather than trickling through the bars as small fragments of unburnt coal which would go to waste amongst the ash. This property of not breaking into small pieces is specially relevant to fuel used in locomotives, because the vibration of the locomotive as it moves along the track tends to make poorer quality fuels break into small pieces which are wasted when they trickle through the fire bars into the ash pit. These properties made Welsh steam coal a premium fuel in wide demand.      

A few decades later, exports of Welsh coal would outstrip the large amounts being used by industries within Wales. By the start of the twentieth century, south Wales was the most important coal exporting coalfield in the world, supplying diverse countries with steam coal. In energy terms, the Bristol Channel was at this time the equivalent of the Persian Gulf a hundred years later. If high quality fuel capable of powering the widest range of machinery was required, then the coal-exporting ports of south Wales were key places to obtain it.

Aerial view looking south east over Cardiff (East Moors) Steel Works around 1960.

In the 19th century the sight of smoke from works’ chimney stacks was regarded as a sign of prosperity. By the early 20th century smoke from burning coal was increasingly recognised as a nuisance but regarded as unavoidable. It was not until after the second world war that serious efforts began to be made to reduce the volumes of smoke from industries and from coal fires in houses – and by this time oil was globally becoming a more important energy source than coal.

The burning of coal, oil and natural gas releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. Internationally, today the largest uses of coal are in electricity generation, cement manufacture and in steel making. Coal ceased to be used to generate electricity in Wales in March 2020; coal continues to be used in the steel and cement industries. 

Tipping a railway wagon of coal at Cardiff Docks, early 20th century. Some coals tended to break up so, instead of tipping the wagons directly into ships’ holds from a considerable height, the coal was tipped into a Lewis Hunter patent ‘coaling box’ (just visible below the copious coal dust) which was picked up by the dockside crane on the left and lowered into the ship’s hold, minimising the height that the coal was dropped.

The Welsh coalfields were intensively mined in the 19th century and output peaked in 1913, declining thereafter due to exhaustion of accessible reserves of coal. Output in 1913 was 60 million tons, half of which was exported; in 2018 output was down to 1.1 million tons. Welsh coal output was in steep decline by the time climate change was widely recognised as a major global issue. Each year the world now produces over a hundred times as much coal as Wales did in 1913, when the Welsh coal industry was at its peak. Even back in 1913, Wales was only producing around 5% of world coal output – its importance at the time was that half of it was exported and that it was regarded as the premium fuel of its time.   

The complex web of communications that enabled Welsh coal to be traded internationally is explained in the Coal gallery at the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea.

 

 

Time to chill

Christian Baars, 2 August 2019

One of the best reasons for housing heritage collections inside buildings is that the building keeps the weather out. Paintings, fossils, books and skeletons are best kept dry, and walls and roofs protect our collections (as well as staff and visitors) from the elements.

In addition, many of the objects in our collections also need specific temperature and humidity ranges to prevent them from suffering damage. Too high a humidity can cause swelling of wood, for example, initiating cracks in objects, or, if humidity gets even higher, mould growth. Therefore, National Museum Cardiff has a complicated air conditioning system. This system is more than 40 years old and has been maintenance-intensive and inefficient for some time.

We are happy to report that, after several years of planning, we have just completed the installation of new chillers and humidifiers at National Museum Cardiff. The purpose of chillers in the museum is to provide cold water – for lowering the temperature of galleries and stores in the summer, and for dehumidifying stores and galleries if there is too much moisture in the air. Humidifiers achieve the opposite effect: they increase humidity in stores and galleries if it is too low. Low humidity is usually a problem during the winter months – you may have experienced your skin drying out at home when you have the heating on in winter. To prevent our collections drying out we cannot apply skin cream; instead, we maintain a minimum level of humidity in stores and galleries.

The chillers and humidifiers have been commissioned now, and are working well. They have already proved that the control of our indoor environments is better than it was before. A very positive side effect of the new technologies is that they are much more efficient than the old equipment. In fact, they are so efficient that we are anticipating to shave almost 50% off our annual electricity bill for National Museum Cardiff, saving the planet more than 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. That is the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road, or the average energy a family home uses in 38 years.

By investing in such new technologies, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales continues to ensure the safe storage and display of the nation’s heritage collections, whilst at the same time making a massive contribution towards the National Assembly’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 (Environment Wales Act 2016).

Find out more about Care of Collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here and follow us on Twitter. Follow the progress of the maintenance works during the coming months in 2019 on Twitter using the hashtag #museumcare.

 

 

Building Management = Collection Care

Christian Baars, 4 December 2018

Cultural heritage collections need a friendly home. 'Friendly' means: a building that protects the collection from the elements – wind, sun and rain. Conservators worry a lot - and rightly so - about pigments fading when they are exposed to light, about stuffed animals being eaten by insect pests, about wartime medals corroding because of the presence of air pollutants. But it’s no good having a fantastic pest management system if the roof leaks. Getting the basics right makes the job of the conservator an awful lot easier and is better for the collection.

Like many museums up and down the country, National Museum Cardiff is housed in a historic building. The museum contains 30 public galleries and 50 collection stores which accommodate almost 3 million objects. This is only part of the national heritage collection of Wales and arguably something we want to protect for the benefit of current and future generations.

But being in a historic building, as beautiful as it is, has its challenges. Much of the building infrastructure is aging and needs modernising. Our roof needs some tlc. Our air conditioning systems are so old, there is nobody left in the museum who was around when they were first installed. And the electrics in parts of the building are not far from receiving a birthday telegram from Her Majesty the Queen.

All of those issues are a problem not just for visitors and staff, but also for the collections. Therefore, we have started modernising our museum building. In the past few years we already had parts of our roof replaced. Less publicly visible was the recent replacement of the electrical infrastructure in the west wing. We are now in the process of undertaking much more work to improve the building.

Some of this work will happen behind closed doors: replacement of our chillers and humidifiers with new, modern and efficient technology, making the museum leaner and greener. Other work will be more obvious to our visitors, including works to the roof of our south wing. Various works will require the temporary closure of some of our public galleries – please bear with us during this time, we are keeping the rest of the museum open and, once the works are completed, all galleries will be accessible again.

One difficulty remains: once all the works are completed the museum will look like nothing ever happened – we do not have a brand new building to show off for all our efforts. BUT the building will feel and operate differently. It will form a more reliable envelope around our collections. It will require less maintenance, saving us money and staff time. It will be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, reducing our energy bills and forming a substantial contribution towards lowering our greenhouse gas emissions.

During this time of potential disruptions please bear in mind the end product, which will include a better museum experience for visitors today (well, next year) and in the future. And a building that continues to help us look after Wales’ national collection.

Should you have any questions at all about our refurbishment programme in relation to the collections, please do get in touch. We will be happy to assist in any way we can.

Find out more about Care of Collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here and follow us on Twitter under the hashtag #museumcare.