Listening to Barbara

The process of putting together an exhibition is about much more than the end result. Barbara discovered more about her family archive than she expected to on this journey with the museum. That is very valuable. When we work collaboratively this process of learning and connecting that Barbara describes can happen.

Because sound and vision (the museum’s focus) are very present and engrained in our day-to-day lives there are so many opportunities to make individual connections with it, we all can find them in our individual and family histories and presents. Working with Bradford partners, collaboratively and individually, creates opportunities to spread and explore that web of curiosity and interests. It’s really interesting to hear that the personal meetings and seeing the diversity of experiences represented in the exhibition were useful to Barbara.

It’s fantastic to read somebody’s experience of all that and it sounds like a very positive one. It is our hope that we can work like this more. It would be great to also have different forums and formats for collaborators to connect and communicate on future projects.

The publication making process, asking people to write about their experience of being part of the Bradford’s National Museum project, is making me think that maybe we can in the future, when a project is finished, go back to people we have worked with and ask them about their experience of the process. I think that would be useful for us to do to develop our practice. It can reassure us about where we are on the right way, and remind us of what we still need to work on.

Kate Burnett, Interpretation Developer

Barbara Hladowski's moment

The opportunity to work with Bradford’s National Museum on the ‘Above the Noise: 15 Stories from Bradford’ exhibition came out...