Museum Makers: A town's collection goes back on display in Poole
How a chance conversation led to a great opportunity for me as a lifelong collector and Poole resident.
This week, Poole Museum officially reopened after being closed for almost 3 years to undergo a £10m major redevelopment. The project has doubled the public accessible space across three listed buildings without the need for any new construction.
The increase in space allows for more of the museum’s complete collection to be on display and greater flexibility for rotating exhibits. The new-look museum also launched with two temporary exhibits, Un/Common People and Sound of the Sea.
I’m very honoured to be a trustee of the Poole Museum Foundation, a charity partner established to support and secure the future of the museum in 2017. The role came about for me following a conversation I had about my Pez collection in summer 2023...
Part of my job is representing our business in the local community. I was attending the opening of another Poole venue and crossed paths with Alison Gudgeon, the project manager for Poole Museum’s redevelopment. Alison had worked as a freelance consultant on a number of research projects I was running when I worked at Bournemouth University in the early 2010s.
While catching up I mentioned what I was looking to do with Collect Us All! and that my Pez collection had recently crossed the 1,000 mark. Alison asked “do you catalogue them?” - I do, as is the case with a few of my collections now, or I wouldn’t be able to keep track of what I do/don’t have when out about at collector fairs or visiting vintage toy shops.
“You’d be great working for a museum” Alison said.
Now believe it or not, it’s not something I’d ever considered, nor had I really made the obvious connection between collecting and museums. Growing up I associated museums with history, and collecting more with the bits and pieces that I cared about, but probably didn’t mean much to other people. More recently, as Sam and I have been travelling and visiting museums in different cities I’ve begun to see things on display that have surprised me - much more modern items, with a pop culture leaning.
I asked Alison to keep me in mind, not expecting anything to ever come of that, but you never know. Perhaps it could be a career change for me in later life, or maybe they might like to display my Pez collection when I hit 2,000 dispensers.
Late last year Alison got back in touch to ask if I would be interested in becoming a trustee. I was pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless and didn’t know what to say at first. A bit of imposter syndrome set in, could I do this? I wasn’t even totally sure what this entailed.
Somewhat unbelievably to me now, I asked if I could have some time to think about it. That was a sound move, I wanted to be sure there wasn't any chance of letting Alison and the team down. In hindsight, having found some confidence in the role, I would’ve said yes in a heartbeat. As it happens, I did within 24 hours.
My role hasn’t (yet) involved the type of cataloguing of collections we’d joked about, nor much that relates directly to my collecting ways at all really, but a passion for preservation and reverence for cultural artefacts, combined with my career in communications has hopefully enabled me to support the organisation during my first year as a trustee, and a very exciting time for the museum.
Here is just a small preview of what you can see on display.
(Open in web browser to view gallery images)
The star of the show is this wooden Hippo. It’s one of three surviving pieces from the nearby Dolphin Centre (the other two are back on display at the Lighthouse). Children visiting the shopping centre between 1969 and 1997 would have played on these, myself included. Perhaps my toughest task as a trustee so far has been keeping it quiet since the summer that it had been airlifted into its new home at the museum.
Our wooden animals are part of a nationwide collection of similar pieces by Peter Hand. Learn more about him and the collection here.
Competing with the Hippo on press coverage, having “gone viral” is Bethan’s Rock. This unassuming item was gifted to Bethan by her late Grandmother. Bethan, aged 5, then donated it to the museum in 2019, who saw the scenario’s potential and put it on display. It returns within the new Harbour Life exhibit.
“Bethan’s Rock is one of those items that really highlights that museums are about people. People’s stories and treasures don’t have to be rare, the don’t have to be significant to everybody it’s about the deeper meaning connected to those objects.” - Gary Edwards, Poole Museum curator.
The spirit of Gary’s words above is certainly present in the items that make up visiting exhibit Un/Common People.
I particularly liked the items from a lady called Pam Whittle’s collection of Poole Speedway memorabilia dating back to the 1950s.
The exhibit also features two examples of toys. A Noah’s Ark play set from 1918 and a more recent collection of Warhammer figures, which I do associate with Poole, as growing up, my friends used to frequent the Games Workshop branch on the high street.
I came away from my first walk around the completed museum with a swell of pride for the town I was born in, went to school, college & university in, and have lived & worked in for my entire life to date. This free to visit museum is a fantastic cultural and educational resource for Poole residents. I’m very grateful to Alison and the team for inviting me to join them on this brilliant adventure. I look forward to learning more about the perspectives on collecting that a museum provides.
📸 All photos featured in this article are my own.
🔗 Please visit poolemuseum.org.uk for more details