In part one I gave some background to the exchange programme with Jamtli museum and my experience of the galleries. In this blog I will focus on the shadowing opportunities we had.

Learning Department

Much of the week, Heulwen and myself shadowed members of the Jamtli learning department. The sessions we shadowed included a visit by a preschool class (6 year olds), a primary school prehistory session, adults learning Swedish and parents with preschool aged children (aged 0-5).

The highlight was the session for the preschool class as it had similarities with 2 of our sessions at St Fagans. The session was run by Pia who was playing a 19^th century character. The children helped Pia prepare her house for a visitor by cleaning and doing some shopping. It was a very interactive session and kept the children engaged the whole time. It has given us some good ideas to make our school sessions more hands on. The buildings used for the preschool were perfectly set up for young children, with play areas designed to be child sized.

We also had the opportunity to visit the 1950s house and had a discussion about reminiscence sessions. It was very useful to find out how the sessions are delivered. Of particular interest was discovering that when groups from care homes visit the museum finds out where the participants are from. They then cater the information and images to the group by providing images from their home towns. The participants sometimes even recognise the people in the photos!

Carpentry

On the Wednesday, Heulwen, Pascal and myself had a tour of the timber buildings led by Jamtli’s head carpenter, Matts. The highlight of this tour was the timber church with painted walls on the inside. This was vividly painted and reminded me of our own St Teilos church here at St Fagans.

Afterwards we visited the wood workshop where we learnt how to make thin shingles and thick shingles (known as church shingles). I had a go at making both types but found the thin shingles much easier to make and was able to make several during my time. The thin shin shingles didn't require too much skill, whereas church shingles required skilled use of an axe. In my unskilled hands I found the axe work very tiring and I only made one church shingle.

Up next…

In the final instalment of my Jamtli visit blog I will discuss the highlights of visiting the historic buildings.

Back in May I was very lucky to go to Jamtli museum on a staff exchange trip called Sharing and Learning. The visit was the last of a series of staff exchanges between St Fagans National Museum of History and Jamtli museum. The exchange programme was funded by Erasmus Plus.

Jamtli Museum

Jamtli museum is situated in the city of Östersund, the capital of Jämtland county in the centre of Sweden. The museum is an open air museum similar to St Fagans. Visitors have the opportunity to visit historic buildings as well as galleries exploring Jämtland’s history. In the summer months the historic buildings come to life during Historyland. During this time actors give visitors the opportunity to step back in time to the 18^th – 20^th Centuries.

Our visit was too early in the year to see Historyland in action but we still had the chance to see the great offer Jamtli has the rest of the year. Myself and my colleague, Heulwen, work in the learning department at St Fagans so our focus was to see what learning opportunities the museum has on offer.

The Galleries

Along with our colleague, Pascal, we started the week with a tour of Jamtli’s indoor galleries. The route down to the galleries provides an opportunity to take a less than traditional method of entering them. At the top of the stairs is a slide in the shape of the Great Lake Monster, Östersund’s equivalent of Loch Ness. Being the big kid I am, I decided to take the fun route down to the galleries. Personally, I think it’s a great way to make the experience of visiting a museum more appealing to children.

The main highlights were the temporary exhibition on hairstyles through the ages, as well as the Sami and Viking exhibitions. All of the exhibitions included some kind of interactivity to encourage children to engage with their history. The exhibitions struck a great balance between the ‘traditional’ museum experience and a more interactive experience.

Up Next…

In the next blog I will focus on the opportunities we had whilst shadowing. Before I go I thought I’d share an image of the horses at Jamtli enjoying the snowy weather in May!

People have been hoarding objects for thousands of years.

People still do it today, but its origins lie in prehistory. This was very common in the Bronze Age (around 3000 years ago) when people collected items, such as weapons and tools, and buried them in pits and ditches. 

Hoards may contain only three or four objects, or up to fifty or more. The largest Bronze Age hoard currently known in Britain contains over 6500 objects! Many hoards have been found in Wales recently and reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme Cymru. This greatly adds to our understanding of prehistoric Wales.

Most recently, the Trevethin hoard from Torfaen has caught media attention, containing three axes and two spearheads. Other hoards have recently been found in the Vale of Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire, and Monmouthshire.

Buried objects include swords, spears, axes, and ingots of raw metal. Sometimes these objects were buried complete and pristine, while others were deliberately broken, burnt and bent before being put in the ground.

Many questions surround this practice.

Why were so many objects buried?

Why were some objects broken, while others were left intact?

Were hoards for religious purposes (e.g. as an offering)? Or did they act as stores of raw material that were lost?

It’s unlikely we will ever truly know the answers to these questions, and there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. However, archaeologists can speculate based on how and where the hoard was buried and by comparing it to known historical periods in which hoarding was also practiced.

For instance, many hoards in Roman and Medieval times were deposited for safe keeping, during times of unrest. Meanwhile, objects deposited on hilltops or in rivers may have been symbolic markers within the landscape.

We can also think about what people do with objects today.

Some people collect objects for a hobby, such as stamps, coins, or shot glasses. Sometimes it’s for a specific purpose, such as preserving heritage – museums are an excellent example of this.

Similarly, items might be destroyed or discarded for a variety of reasons, such as eliminating a memory, commemorating the death of a friend or family, or simply as waste. Of course we can’t forget that sometimes objects might simply be lost.

Whatever the reason, hoarding formed an important tradition in Bronze Age Wales. With every new discovery, archaeologists get one step closer to understanding prehistoric ideas and values.

The Trevethin hoard is one of several hoards that was responsibly reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme Cymru. It is now proudly on display at Pontypool Museum where it can be enjoyed by all members of the public. It was acquired with funding from the Saving Treasures: Telling Stories Project. More details on how the hoard was investigated, as well as a conversation with the finder, Gareth Wileman, can be found here.

Whether you love L. S. Lowry, Lucian Freud or Richard Long, you know that when you visit Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales you can always see outstanding examples of international modern and contemporary art. What you might not know is that a significant part of that collection is here thanks to The Derek Williams Trust, which lends Amgueddfa Cymru over 260 of its most important works of twentieth and twenty-first century art.

This week sees the launch of The Derek Williams Trust website, a fantastic resource for anyone interested in exploring this collection. The site will enable you to search for art works and artists, and discover more about the Trust and its work with Amgueddfa Cymru.

Derek Williams was a Cardiff-based chartered surveyor and art lover, who had a particular interest in mid-twentieth century British art. He collected a large number of works by John Piper and Ceri Richards, which were supported with works by major figures such as Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, David Jones, Ivon Hitchens and Josef Herman. Following Williams’ death in 1984, his collection and the residue of his estate were left in trust. Since that time, The Derek Williams Trust has undertaken the care, enhancement and public display of the collection, and in turn lends the collection to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. The generous support of Trust has transformed the Museum’s collection of twentieth century art and parallels the great bequests of French Impressionist art made by Gwendoline and Margaret Davies a generation earlier.

Since 1992, The Derek Williams Trust has also been working with Amgueddfa Cymru to build its own collection of modern and contemporary art, and recent purchases include work by Howard Hodgkin, George Shaw, Anthony Caro and Clare Woods. The Trust also provides financial support for Museum purchases, and funds the biennial Artes Mundi Derek Williams Trust Purchase Award – recent recipients include Tanja Bruguera, Ragnar Kjartansson and Bedwyr Williams.

For the latest news from The Derek Williams Trust collection, why not follow us on Instagram and Twitter?

There are lots of amazing things at National Museum Cardiff, but if we had to choose the one that’s most popular with our visitors it would probably be the dinosaurs. The Evolution of Wales gallery is often the first place people visit, and our dinosaur-themed school sessions are constantly in demand.

That’s why Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales is launching its new dinosaur eBook Dinosaur Detectives. Aimed at visitors between 7 and 11, the interactive resource allows users to become virtual palaeontologists and explore real fossils from our collections. The eBook contains photographs of specimens as well as Frank Duffy’s illustrations from our dinosaur children’s book, Albie The Adventurer.

You can unearth a dinosaur fossil, find out if T. rex had big feet, and discover what dinosaurs liked to eat, through a variety of puzzles, games and interactives that put the user in charge of their own learning. There is also the chance to meet Wales's newest dinosaur Dracoraptor hanigani.

Model of Dracoraptor hanigani, the small theropod dinosaur found near to Penarth in 2014 and now on display in the Evolution of Wales gallery

Download the eBook onto your iPad or other Apple device and start finding out more. You can use it at home, or bring it to the museum and use it as you explore the galleries. Look for this symbol to find more dinosaur facts in the museum’s Evolution of Wales galleries. 

Let us know what you find out! Share your favourite dinosaur facts from the eBook or the museum on Twitter, by tagging us at @Museum_CdfLearn. Don’t forget to play the design-a-dinosaur game, and share that with us on Twitter too!

Download the Apple version from the iTunes store, or a PDF resource from our website.

If that’s not enough dinosaurs for one day, why not visit our new exhibition, Dinosaur Babies? Opening on the 27^th of May, this is the first chance to see this exciting family-friendly exhibition in Wales. It includes full size dinosaur skeletons, touchable models of dinosaur embryos and eggs, and even a huge 2.5 metre model dinosaur nest! Visit our What’s On page for more information.