The National Bird of Britain

After a poll of nearly a quarter of a million votes, the robin is now officially Britain’s national bird. 

The National Bird Vote saw the robin take 34% of the votes, followed by the barn owl and the blackbird, at 12% and 11% respectively.

Birder and organiser of the poll, David Lindo, claimed the robin’s bullish and territorial, yet chirpy nature is why Britain has voted for the robin as the country’s national bird. Our familiarity with the robin could also be why it was so popular, Grahame Madge, RSPB spokesman, says that wherever you are in Britain the robin “is only a flutter away from our footsteps, [it’s] a worthy winner”.

Another obvious factor at play is the robin’s presence in British culture. Christmas and robins seem to go hand-in-hand as they feature on cards, in carols and even gave their name to the red-coated Victorian postmen that delivered Christmas cards. The robin also has religious associations; legend suggests that the robin flew to Jesus at his crucifixion and is forever marked with Christ’s blood on its chest. It’s distinctive red breast has obviously endeared itself to the nation.

Although the robin deserves its place as the national bird due to its distinctive characteristics and historical significance, some critics of the robin’s new title say that the position of national bird should be used to spearhead a conservation movement for the species or national wildlife. The robin’s position as national bird of Britain deprives other lesser known, more endangered birds of recognition and aid. Furthermore, robins and their nests are already fully protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

However, the nature of the poll, leaving the British public to decide, would possibly increase the chances of well-known birds winning the title. In a separate poll at Knowsley Safari Park, 500 children under 15 were asked to identify the shortlist by their photographs. The results show that only a third of the children believed that all were actually British. One notable member of the shortlist was the Hen Harrier, which came ninth out of the shortlist. It is regarded as the most heavily persecuted bird in Britain and is targeted by gamekeepers and a raised platform would certainly be a step towards a Defra act to end its persecution.

In other countries, the Philippine eagle was declared a national bird to highlight its difficulties, the scarlet macaw was declared the national bird of Honduras in 1993 in a bid to raise awareness of the varied wildlife in the country and the ‘Near Threatened’ resplendent quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala was considered sacred both in Mayan culture and by the conquistadors.

Therefore, although the robin has a rich history within British culture, more could be done to conserve British wildlife. One way in which this could be done is through the nomination of birds of the year. Since 1995, The Estonian Ornithological society selects birds of the year to encourage interest and conservation activities. Estonia’s bird of the year for 2015 is the buzzard, which means the population is monitored, live webcams focus on breeding pairs and constant updates go up on their website, which helps to raise awareness of the species. All of this is done whilst also retaining their national bird, the Barn Swallow. Annual projects such as this would provide extensive information for a wide range of birds that would benefit from conservation.

Maintaining Britain’s national bird as the robin would capture the British spirit and confirm its historical cultural significance, however, the bird of the year would help raise the profile of the less familiar species and help bring in legislation to protect them.  

This post was written by Andrew Taylor, an NTU Masters student in Museum and Heritage Management and a Culture Syndicates Heritage Assistant.

Representing World War One: Heroes and Villains

When we consider how World War One is represented we conjure up images of those who fought on the battlefields who either died or survived while fighting for their country. However, we also picture those who remained at home and this is emphasised by The Galleries of Justice recent exhibition that ‘explores the impact that the Great War had on crime, policing, and imprisonment’. This exhibition focuses on the home front bringing the war much closer to home and in doing so it localises Nottingham’s wartime involvement by identifying what crimes were committed from ‘1914-1916’. Some of these crimes include ‘escapee prisoners of war, Anti-German riots and absentees’. The presence of the war at home is explored through ‘the changing role of the police’ as they had to deal with growing public anxieties towards ‘enemy aliens and prisoners of war’. Britain, during the First World War, was suspicious of those who posed a threat to society but how were these people classified as either Heroes or Villains? Enemy aliens were pictured as fulfilling the character of the Villain but how true is this portrayal? The museum reflects upon these issues through its exhibition design because parts of the exhibition are targeted towards the audience’s senses. In some rooms the visitor is made to feel imprisoned but they are left to question whether this is because they are following the path of a Hero or a Villain. Therefore, it is intended here to argue that the Galleries of Justice exhibition is challenging the British narrative of the First World War by focusing on the negative affects of the conflict at home. Although the British narrative remembers the horrors of the trenches the negative coverage of crime is not as widely reflected upon, as the home front is typically characterised by communities coming together to support the war effort.

As the visitor first steps into the exhibition they are presented with a conventional narrative of WWI because the characteristics of the war are all there such as the sand bags, the barbed wire, the medals, the Flanders Fields poem, and the image of the poppy. There are also lists of names of those who perished from the local area. But when one moves closer to the individual sections within the first gallery another narrative comes into the frame that of crime. The background of the exhibition that the individual panels are placed onto reveal a conventional rather national narrative but the panels then describe the lives and deaths of those who were connected to Nottingham’s law society and county police force. We are told that a Lieutenant Williams ‘was killed by a bursting shell’ south of Ypres detailing the horrors of war and how they affected the local community. But this story also offers an indication of where the narration will lead us next as it presents the German as the ‘Other’. 

The second gallery portrays the outbreak of the war at home and again the typical scenes are illustrated through the conscription posters. However, the narrative is soon made complex as the visitor is shown how the affects of war impact upon those who stayed behind. This is first depicted through the panel that shows ‘The Sinking of the Lusitania – The Rise of Anti-German Riots’. Here British identities are contrasted to German identities, which are recurrent tropes within the historiography but this story is then linked to the feelings of hostility at home and those who posed a threat to society. This is emphasised through ‘The Wagner Family’ board, which details the attack on their butcher’s shop ‘due to the anti German feelings of the time’. Although the family had lived in Nottingham since ‘1873’ their German heritage had consequently now classified them as ‘Enemy Aliens’ who were not to be trusted. 

Evidently the impact of war had many consequences at home. This complex narrative invites the visitor to question the British narrative of WWI and in doing so reflect upon how British people reacted to those who prior to the war had just been a fellow neighbour within society but now they were regarded as the enemy. 

The police force prior to the war were used to dealing with theft, missing people, and lost property but as the war progressed their jobs too adapted. They now had to deal with a different kind of ‘villain’ within society – the foreigner – the enemy – the escapee prisoner. This is the most stimulating part of the exhibition because it calls into question who is a villain and who is a hero? However, it also evokes the audience to question whether they would have reacted in the same way and whether they agree with these verdicts. The ‘Friend or Foe?’ section is split into three passages and all of them are sealed at one end so that the visitor enters with one idea and could potentially leave with a different idea about the narration. This is exactly what happened when we visited the exhibition because the first passage about ‘Prisoners of War’ opens with a poster that announces that some inmates had escaped from an internment camp called Sutton Bonnington. We are told that these men are ‘German’ and that should they be found they will be ‘arrested’. Evidently, a picture was created in your minds that these characters were suspicious and suspect. Then we ventured into another passage, which described the accommodation and living conditions that the prisoners experienced such as overcrowding. Here however we started to feel empathy towards those who were imprisoned but soon this is challenged again as we discovered the individual stories of the escapees. The visitor’s view on who is a villain is already clearly mixed but as you double back and enter section two this is made even more complex. Passage two tells you about the story of ‘Conscientious Objectors’ and their names cover the walls as you enter the space. The names in passage one are Muller, Stoffa and Pluschaw but the names in section two are Williams, Smith, Taylor, Goldenberg, Cullen, Watson, Peel and Cook to name but a few. The identities of these individuals are that of local people whereas the identities of the previous group were German. However, both could be classified as ‘Villains’ although typically the German is depicted as the ‘Villain’, the British subject is now also classified as the ‘Villain’ too because some refused to go to war. This is reiterated through the scene of the wooden bed and jail cell bars as you are first led to believe that these people were in fact criminals. Only when you read the individual stories do you question whether they are in fact a ‘friend’ of the nation. For example, Stephen Henry Hobhouse was a Quaker who refused to be sent to war and was therefore imprisoned for objecting to serve his country. During his lifetime he was unmistakably seen as a ‘foe’ but this story questions the British collective memory of the WWI because he can also be seen as a ‘friend’ or rather a ‘hero’ because he fought for what he believed in, he refused to use violence, and he refused to be silent while in prison. This is taken further in the final section as the question ‘Did enemy aliens deserve to be interned during the war?’ is posed. One individual’s story is especially poignant because she blurs the lines between enemy alien and British national. Mrs Schonewald was a widower who was arrested for not registering as an enemy alien but she was born in Britain to a British family. But she had married a German man and had had three children with him and all three of her sons were enlisted and serving in the British army. She was made to register otherwise charges would have been brought against her. Today we picture Mrs. Schonewald as a ‘Friend’, which suggests that this exhibition is challenging our assumptions of wartime roles and whether today we would still classify people into these pigeonholes. 

With the recent centenary of WWI many narratives have been called into question, revitalized, and remembered in a variety of ways. This exhibition is a part of this research and remembrance and has shown how today there are still many questions still to ask about this war. One final concluding remark to make is that the exhibition recently won the Wendy Golland Award for Quality of Research at the East Midlands Heritage Conference and Awards 2015, which highlights that these questions that the exhibition asks are still relevant today and are keeping these memories alive for future generations. Moreover, the fact that The Galleries of Justice have presented an unconventional narrative of WWI also suggests that they are leading the field with regards to museums taking research further than straightforward narrations of history.

This post was written by Amy Williams. Amy is currently undertaking an internship at Culture Syndicates and studying for her MA in Holocaust and Related Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is blogging about her experiences with Culture Syndicates on their Linked In page: http://linkd.in/1Mqo46v

Are we remembering to forget or are we keeping memory alive?

Recently there has been an increased focus directed towards how Britain remembers the Holocaust - emphasised by David Cameron’s launch of the Holocaust Commission. The pledge is that ‘the commission will work to ensure Britain has a permanent memorial to the Holocaust and educational resources for future generations’. As Andrew Pearce puts it - within the ‘last quarter of the twentieth century’ the remembrance of the Holocaust has undergone ‘a profound transformation in Britain’. However, Britain’s Holocaust consciousness is more complex than first thought because teaching aims within schools and within exhibitions, such as the Imperial War Museum, have adopted a national master narrative that limits our ability to ask difficult questions.

The focus at a recent conference “Between Obsession, Routine, and Contestation: Remembering the Holocaust in Europe today” revealed how some publications have suggested that ‘the Germans have had enough of Hitler and the Holocaust’. Harold Welzer has stated that, “Hitler can be forgotten”. While Ulrike Jureit has illustrated that ‘the Holocaust Memorial was more of the 1968 generation’s pathological identification with Jewish victims than of anything else’. There seems to be a contrast between Germany and Britain: is one forgetting while another is keeping memory alive? However, this question is too simplistic because Britain as well as other countries up until the 1970s experienced, as Barbie Zelizer points out, the ‘period of amnesia’. This period saw an increased interest in survivor’s memories that had largely been previously ignored. When we discuss remembering to forget it could be that through the creation of many memorials to the Holocaust we have grown to think more in-depth about their purpose and who is doing the remembering and on behalf of what group?

The next questions to consider are - will the current debates within Germany affect Britain and will Britain’s new energy to memorialise and educate impact upon Germany? Here we will consider the affect of transnational memory on these two countries, especially with regard to Britain. Today, survivor’s memories are now at the forefront of memory because we are able to watch them recount in documentary films, read their memoires and listen to them speak at events, which are produced in many countries. But with regard to memorialisation of the Holocaust has Germany reached a moment of fatigue? As previously stated there are numerous memorials in Germany but very few in Britain, although one memorial that is visible in Britain is the memorial to the Kindertransport in Liverpool Street, London. This memorial is physically imprinted onto Britain’s consciousness because it is outside a busy train station but is increasingly having a mental impact due to the national curriculum, the Holocaust commission and through the work of Beth Shalom, The National Holocaust Centre and Museum.

‘While countries around the globe are moving the Holocaust to the centre of their historical and memorial consciousness’, Britain has an opportunity to ask questions that have previously been too taboo to ask or considered too complex to address within schools and museums. However, Beth Shalom’s exhibitions are making us think about topics that have previously adopted the national narrative in a new way. It is important to keep this memory alive – the topic of the 2015 Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain – but we have to ask more challenging questions. For example, if we consider the Kindertransport how do we reflect upon Britain’s role as both a rescuer and a bystander? How do we ‘commemorate’ the perpetrator – we remember their crimes – but how do we represent this in a museum exhibition and in a memorial? 

This post was written by Amy Williams. Amy is currently undertaking an internship at Culture Syndicates and studying for her MA in Holocaust and Related Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is blogging about her experiences with Culture Syndicates on their Linked In page: http://linkd.in/1Mqo46v

The Future is Wheat Starch?

Culture Syndicates' Jess Tarver and Eileen Patrick 

test out the speedy new method of labelling objects

The Culture Syndicates have been working with a museum just outside Nottingham on labelling their accessioned objects. Although we have worked with several museums in the past this is the first one that asked us to use wheat starch to label the collection when possible.  This is a review of how to use wheat starch and what how we found it.

What you need

·         Neutral Pure Wheat Starch

·         Acid free paper

·         Archival pen

·         A small paint brush

All these items can be found at http://www.preservationequipment.com/

You will also need

·         Distilled water

·         Scissors               

·         A jar (such as a jam jar)

·         A microwave 

The method

To make up the wheat starch mix 1 teaspoon of wheat starch powder to 5 teaspoons of distilled water and then heat it up in the microwave. We found that a little goes a long way so would suggest that to start with you only use this amount.

To create the label write it out on the acid free paper, using an archival pen, and cut it out. Using the paint brush, put a small amount of the wheat starch solution onto the object and then place the label top and stick it down using a bit more starch solution. Leave to dry.  

What objects can it be used on?

What is great about this product is that it can be used on a diverse range of objects. It can be used on wood, glass metal, ceramics, bone and plastics.

Time

The wheat starch methods takes around 10 minutes in total: labelling and the drying time.

The old paraloid and B67 poly method takes around 1 hour (including drying time for the paraloid and B67 poly layers).

Therefore the time saved for is roughly 50 minutes per object…that’s 8 hours for 100 objects!!!

Pros

This method is very easy and quick, especially compared to the paraloid sandwich method

There are no chemicals involved

This method can be used on a number of different surfaces

Cons

It is not suitable for all objects:

-          The labels are very obvious on small or transparent objects

-          The wheat starch solution does not stick very well to polished metals

Would we use it again?

Yes. This process makes it very easy to label a range of objects and takes less time than other methods. However it is unlikely that it would be possible to do an entire collection using solely this technique but it has made the process of labelling 500 + objects faster. We highly recommend that it is added to museums’ labelling kits.