Abstract:
Background
We work at the intersection of post qualitative pedagogies, historical thinking and arts based practices in the museum space. In this presentation we will discuss the learning that comes from encounters with the vital matter of foundling home tokens in a project called ‘(re)dressed’.
We research two museum collections at the London Foundling Museum and the Museo Degli Innocenti in Florence. We consider how connection over time casts a legacy of affective entanglements for researchers and visitors (Clark & Nye, 2023). We have developed a visitor/researcher/maker practice whereby we draw on the practices and methods of traditional histories, museology, and arts-based research to engage creatively with these archives.
Significance and Aims
This paper introduces our visitor/researcher/maker practice and how it interrogates museum collections and exhibitions to create opportunities for knowledge acquisition in new ways. We ask: How might our initial encounters with foundling tokens be explored, understood and reconstituted through the experience of visitor/researcher/maker to take the story of child surrender to a new place of contemporary engagement? Ultimately, how might our making of children’s garments - (re)dressing - using images of the material legacy of the foundlings allow us to generate new knowledge and reveal the educative value of encounter and entanglement in museums?
Research Design
The extended researcher/visitor/maker practice is an assemblage that evolved through collaborative talk, imagining, close noticing and ‘walking with’ methodologies. Drawing on new materialism and post qualitative approaches we explore the affective entanglements of the museum experience using process methodologies (Mazzei, 2021). Recognising the value of arts-based research, we ‘make’ garments to engage with corporeality, to bring presence to absence and to think historically with matter.
Key Findings and Implications
The researcher/visitor/maker assemblage suggests new possibilities for access to the social and cultural memory of museums. The reconfiguration of the foundling tokens through a mixed arts-based practice allows us to think differently about the museum experience and represent our embodied knowledge in a highly visual and tactile way. (Re)dressed contributes to conversations about the pedagogical value of affective encounter in museums as a form of historical thinking .
References
Clark, J. & Nye, A. (2023). Foundling museums: Exhibition design and the intersections of the vital materiality of foundling tokens and affective visitor experience. Museum Management and Curatorship, 38(6), 662-678.
Mazzei, L. (2021). Postqualitative inquiry: Or the necessity of theory. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(2), 198-200.
We work at the intersection of post qualitative pedagogies, historical thinking and arts based practices in the museum space. In this presentation we will discuss the learning that comes from encounters with the vital matter of foundling home tokens in a project called ‘(re)dressed’.
We research two museum collections at the London Foundling Museum and the Museo Degli Innocenti in Florence. We consider how connection over time casts a legacy of affective entanglements for researchers and visitors (Clark & Nye, 2023). We have developed a visitor/researcher/maker practice whereby we draw on the practices and methods of traditional histories, museology, and arts-based research to engage creatively with these archives.
Significance and Aims
This paper introduces our visitor/researcher/maker practice and how it interrogates museum collections and exhibitions to create opportunities for knowledge acquisition in new ways. We ask: How might our initial encounters with foundling tokens be explored, understood and reconstituted through the experience of visitor/researcher/maker to take the story of child surrender to a new place of contemporary engagement? Ultimately, how might our making of children’s garments - (re)dressing - using images of the material legacy of the foundlings allow us to generate new knowledge and reveal the educative value of encounter and entanglement in museums?
Research Design
The extended researcher/visitor/maker practice is an assemblage that evolved through collaborative talk, imagining, close noticing and ‘walking with’ methodologies. Drawing on new materialism and post qualitative approaches we explore the affective entanglements of the museum experience using process methodologies (Mazzei, 2021). Recognising the value of arts-based research, we ‘make’ garments to engage with corporeality, to bring presence to absence and to think historically with matter.
Key Findings and Implications
The researcher/visitor/maker assemblage suggests new possibilities for access to the social and cultural memory of museums. The reconfiguration of the foundling tokens through a mixed arts-based practice allows us to think differently about the museum experience and represent our embodied knowledge in a highly visual and tactile way. (Re)dressed contributes to conversations about the pedagogical value of affective encounter in museums as a form of historical thinking .
References
Clark, J. & Nye, A. (2023). Foundling museums: Exhibition design and the intersections of the vital materiality of foundling tokens and affective visitor experience. Museum Management and Curatorship, 38(6), 662-678.
Mazzei, L. (2021). Postqualitative inquiry: Or the necessity of theory. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(2), 198-200.