Voyage of Discovery
On Wednesday the 24th of November the members of the team (Felicia, Rémi, Floris, June and Oliver) visited the Discovery Museum, in Newcastle, to meet our project collaborator, the Tyne and Wear Archive and Museum (TWAM). We were welcomed by Lizzy Baker, the Archive Lead at the Tyne and Wear archives, and Carolyn Ball, Manager of the Discovery Museum and Tyne & Wear Archives, in charge of the strategic direction and vision for the Museum and the Archives.
We are all very excited about our collaboration, which chimes with many of TWAM’s themes in their vision for Newcastle. The TWAM reopened in June 2021, after almost a year and a half of closure. Since then, Lizzy and Carolyn engaged all their resources to involve their institutions in the city’s efforts in revitalise Newcastle’s city centre, through innovative projects, and combining stories of women, migrants, innovations and workers into an inclusive history of the Tyne and Wear region.
As part of the Migration museums network, and thanks to its deep investment in local culture and heritage, expertise in the field of technologies, industries and innovations, and its multiple partnerships with a large network of museums across the UK, TWAM is a great partner for our project.
TWAM’s participation in National collaborative projects opens up the perspective of interesting crossovers in terms of possible future collaborations and joint work. Particularly exciting for us are Exchange: Community-Led Collections Research, aiming to promote dialogue between cultural institutions and South-Asian, African and African-Caribbean diaspora organisations to answer research questions identified by these community groups; and the Congruence engine research project, that aims at creating a digital toolbox for everyone interested in the industrial past.
We hope to provide similarly valuable contributions to TWAM ourselves. By finding historical case studies among the archive and museum collections of the TWAM, we will actively contribute to the enhancement of the museum’s materials, with a special focus on former and contemporary histories of migrants’ experience in the Northeast of England. The discussions about the future collaborations and initiatives were fruitful, and we were particularly impressed by the initiatives of the museum towards the inclusion of migrants into the local history of the Tyne and Wear region.
After the meeting, the team was offered the exciting opportunity to visit the archive stores. Tyne and Wear archives have a huge collection of urban archives, county archives and archives related to the industries of Tyne and Wear, such as the boat production and international commercialisation. The minutes of the city and regionals councils are stored here, as well as medieval charters dating back to the 12th century.
We were impressed by the richness of this archive. Documents in Latin, German, Russian or even Arabic covers a 900-year period of time. We had the fantastic opportunity to see the oldest manuscript kept at the archives: a 12th century charter issued by the bishop of Durham in 1183.
We left the TWAM with the conviction that this collaboration will provide excellent results. We can’t wait to explore and research the Museums and Archives rich collections and continue the conversation with Lizzy, Carolyn and their team as we move forward with the project.
