The Folk Museum (rebranded to the Life Museum) is Mary's favourite museum - it is a great local treasure full of local history and fun activities for the kids, behind the scenes there is a lot of curation and looking after the collections. The building itself is a beautiful wooden beamed structure that is hundreds of years old - sadly this also means it is expensive to maintain.
And so what with cuts and austerity and a struggling council the heartbreaking news that they were going to close the museum was not so much a shock but an expected blow. The museums do relatively cheap activities for the kids and the staff are lovely but the news had already reached me that the staff had been slashed in number over all three council run buildings (two museums and the Guildhall).
This is the museum where Mary left her money baby in the wendy house and the staff went out of their way to return it too us.
So obviously I'm not the only person who feels ill at ease with loosing this local resource and historical gem and a petition was soon up and running - you can sign it here. Since it was started up the Civic Trust have said they will take it on but if that is the case then it is doubtful that they can afford a curator so there would be no one to manage and maintain the collection. Curation is not just about labelling things and putting them in shelf displays - it is also about making sure things are kept in ways that do not damage them - with out a curator then the potential damage is pretty high (mind due the roof leaks so if that is not fixed then the damage will be damn high too).
Added to all this is the fact that historic buildings that are not wanted by the right people tend to go up in flames around here - recently there was three fires in one night - all targeting local old pubs with development issues.
Jokingly me and my friend suggested we might need to make a human shield around the museum - we were only half joking :/ I wish I was rich because I would buy it and fix it and pay the staff and make it free access and have a mini hackspace and little science/education bit in the new building out the back in garden. I'd hold talks in the cafe and stuff like that.
This is the poll I posted to twitter - and here are the options of the slightly more in depth one that I posted to Facebook:
The Beginning/Deep Time
Present Day
Space/Interstellar
The Beginning of Human History
Upload/VR/Singularity
Post Apocalyptic Near Future
Pretty much I've had equal votes for everything plus some pointers on what individuals like ie no excessive flash backs/forwards and no huge storyline dumps etc...
The plan is that in 2019 I will begin rolling out the edited finished versions of stuff in The Punk's Universe for the reader... but I don't know where to begin the story for the reader. There is a hell of a lot of stuff written which I am currently editing and finishing and re-writing and in some cases still desperately researching.
2019 will mark the 10 year anniversary of me starting my first NaNoWriMo - a month long writing challenge. I have taken part in all the writing challenges I possible could since and most of those have been set in the same universe. Initially I thought it was a sci-fi version of the scififantasy story I'd been writing and world building since I was 13. Then I realised that no - it was in fact the same universe and the "magic" was all just the nanotech and the like. It was a pretty strong contender for scifi to begin with because I fail at sustained fantasy worlds ie I can manage maybe a short story and then scifi will start creeping in.
Anyway the issue is that there are 100, 000's of words written and about a 1000 pages of comic book scripted in the universe and only a few short stories of it are out there and this needs to be rectified!
Seriously I have now been writing this for what 2/3rds of my life?
So yeah - ideas, feedback etc... would be useful 🙂
Ta much!
This is tonight - me and a host of other poets who happen to have a connection to Gloucester will be performing at St Mary's DeCrypt in Gloucester. The building is ancient and being restored - I'm really looking forward to seeing inside it actually 🙂
It is being compered by the wonderful poet and comedian Angie Blecher. It's gearing up to be a cracking night of poetics and fun 🙂
My July events plus any of the regular things I can get to in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Stroud.
Poetry performance - Thursday 6th Come To Where I am From at the Fountain Inn tix are free
Upcycled Headdresses and Accessories - Cornbury Music Festival 7-9th July
Poetry performance - Crypt Slam in Gloucester
Fantasy Headdresses and Accessories Upcylced Workshop and poetry performance with Food For Thoughts - Sat 15th July - Art In The City - Gloucester
Poetry Workshop - Thursday 20th July Villanelles Fountain Inn Gloucester.
Cuddly Science Amazing Archeology and Fabulous Fossils -Sat 22nd July at the Gloucester Cathedral Festival of Archeology
Cuddly Science has a new puppet 🙂 Mary Leakey - an paleoanthropologist who along with various other members of her family and team found alot of the early homonid fossils and moved our understanding of our own evolution on in leaps and bounds.
Mary Leakey was one of my science heroes when I was a teen - during my GCSEs and A'levels I read all the books the library had or could get on her discoveries. And she was in the original list of ten puppets to make for Cuddly Science. My Mum and Dad worked on her mainly in secret for me, knowing I was uber busy with things.
She also doubles as a general geologist, archeologist and explorer! Which is just what I needed with various archeology festivals and geology based workshops coming up this summer!
The puppet was in fact barely finished before it was being whizzed off to the Cheltenham Science Festival to help explain the Cheltenham Hackspace's magic sand box!
This 3D projector that maps the sand contours in real time and projects and ever updating graded colour system on top was amazing! I do have video but haven't worked out how to extract it from my phone etc...
We had over 10, 000 kids through the Makers Shack at the festival which was amazing and also exhausting! Mary Leakey and Ada Lovelace both enjoyed their outings and I have a hell of a lot more photos and vids to put up from the festival including trying to launch a robot into near Earth orbit! But for now I shall end with this pic of Mary Leakey chilling and relaxing behind the scenes.
Archeology, Building Maintenance, Education, Mary, News, Society | sarah | 
Mon 24th Jul 2017 9:26 am | 
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