The working life of Museum of London

Day 5 (the last day)

For the final day of the project everyone was hard at work editing their interviews. The group did brilliantly editing 15 minute interviews into 5 minutes or less in just a few hours. At the end of a long afternoon we listened back to some of them. They were fantastic and really opened up some of the personal stories behind these Riots. 

 What next?

The interviews are currently being transcribed and the many photographs sorted. We’ll then be uploading the audio, transcriptions and photographs to our main Museum website, so watch this space! 

See more of the photos from the project here.

This blog has been written by participants of a social media reporting project.

Day 4

It’s the day of the interviews and we’re all prepared.  Some of us are up and out interviewing on the streets of Brixton on the front line reliving the experience of the 1981 riots.

A few of us admitted to feeling nervous, but speaking to the interviewees prior to the interviews really helped to calm the nerves and provided valuable information for the main interviews.

Our official photographer Frewine Solomon was joined by another photographer from Time Out magazine who took pictures of us in action, and some of us were interviewed – it’ll be interesting what they say about us!

After doing our interviews we sat quietly and did our logging – hopefully this will help us with the editing process.

See photos from the project here.

This blog has been written by participants involved in a social media reporting project.

Day 3 

A journalist from The Guardian came down to the workshop to find out more about the project and interviewed us about what we were doing. She seemed interested in the project and wanted to find out more about us.

The last day to prepare for our interviews, we have been given a list of interviewees.  We discussed what questions to ask, how we wanted to present our interviews and were given the interviewees contact details to introduce ourselves.

We learnt how to edit using Audacity a free programme we downloaded off the internet. It was a good eye opener into world of editing. Our telephone conversation with the interviewees was really useful for gaining background information for the interviews. We ended the day presenting our interview plan to the group.

See photographs from the project here.

  Teeth are one of the strongest elements of the skeleton and often survive well in archaeological remains. Diseases that affect the dentition are one of the more common pathological conditions observed in the study of human remains. These can be used to inform us about the diet, oral hygiene, stress and occupations of past populations (Roberts and Manchester 2005: 63).

One type of pathology that affects the teeth is calculus. This is caused by a build up of plaque in the mouth that sticks to the surfaces of the teeth. These deposits can become mineralized or calcified and remain attached to the teeth. Calculus is observed as hard deposits of  yellow or brown coloured material located above the gum line (supragingival) or below (subgingival). It can range from slight deposits to large build ups, that can cover most of a tooth surface.

 Dental caries or cavities are a common type of dental pathology that continue to cause much pain for sufferers today. The break down of foods such as sugars, carbohydrates and starch by bacteria in the mouth, can create acids that attack the hard surfaces of teeth. This can lead to the development of caries (small holes and cavities) that can be observed on the enamel and root surfaces. If this destruction continues, extensive decay or gross caries of the entire tooth can occur, leading to early loss.

Carious decay and the build up of calculus on the surfaces of teeth can result in infection and inflammation of the soft tissues surrounding the tooth or gingivitis (gum disease). If this inflammation passes to the bone it can result in the resorbtion of the alveolar bone of the tooth socket (periodontal disease). This may lead to the exposure of the root and early loss as the tooth becomes loose in its socket.

If infection reaches the pulp cavity, inflammation may result in a build up of puss around the region of the tooth root. A large cavity or sinus may form, penetrating the outer surface of the bone, allowing the puss to escape. This can be seen as a large hole or abscess in the region of bone above or below the infected tooth and may also result in early loss.

Another type of dental pathology observed is defects to the enamel surface of a tooth. These are seen as hypoplastic lines, pits and grooves casued by thinning of the enamel surface when the tooth was developing during childhood. These may indicate disturbances during growth, caused by a variety of factors including dietary deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, and disease (Chamberlain 1998: 37).

Analysis of skeletons from the post-medieval (1843-1854) catholic mission of Sts. Mary and Michael, Whitechapel, London has revealed high rates of dental disease. Eighty one percent of adults showed evidence of dental caries, 90.7% had calculus, 78.6% suffered from periodontal disease, 35.9% had dental abscesses, 77.8 % had lost teeth during life and 54.4% showed hypoplastic defects of the tooth enamel. The teeth of children were also affected with 33.9% presenting cavities of at least one tooth, 12.1% with calculus and 10.2% with enamel hypoplasia.

This blog has been written by participants involved in a Social Media reporting project. 

Day 2

We learned about the social media tools we could use to broadcast our own stories and opinions on certain matters using the internet, using websites called Flickr, Youtube and Wordpress.  Then we had to create our strategies on how to present our interviews: thinking about what questions to ask, and whether to add pictures or sound effects.  After we had done that we interviewed two Museum of London staff members: Paul Clifford and Martin Kaufman, who were living in and around Brixton at the time of the riots, about what they remembered from the time.  We learnt that interviewing isn’t just reading questions from a piece of paper, but rather listening to the answers given by the interviewee and building further questions from that.  It was harder than we thought.

This blog is written by participants of a one week social reporting project.

Day 1

This is a project run by the Museum of London,  to bring the story of the Brixton riots in 1981 to life.  We will be interviewing people from the Brixton area of that time.   We are a group of Londoners,  given the chance to learn reporting and interviewing skills,  with the help of sounddelivery.  We weren’t around at the time of the riots, but we want to learn more.  We started the day with a bit of history from a community historian Angelina Osborne  dating back to the 16th century up to the date of the riots in  April 1981. We learned the key factors that lead to the riot like racism, anger, housing, unemployment and the introduction of the sus laws which gave the police power to target the people of the Brixton area . We ended the afternoon with sounddelivery training us on the equipment and showing  the different techniques of reporting and interviewing.

We recorded our thoughts of Brixton on our first day, as part of the training. 

My Brixton - First ever interviews by the participants of the project

Click here to see photographs from the first day of the project!

This is just a quick note to say, if you have experienced any problems with our Ceramics and Glass or Clay Pipes websites recently, they should be fixed now. You may found that pages on those sites didn’t load completely, or have received warnings about a trojan of some sort, perhaps from your browser or from your firewall. You might also have seen a pop-up asking to download a chinese character set. This was all down to the fact that some code that had been injected into our databases which was loading with the pages and trying to access Chinese websites to insert their junk onto our pages.

We have cleaned out the databases now and have improved their security so that hopefully this “attack vector” is no longer open. Apologies for any problems you may have experienced - my embarassment is complete, because this is not the first time this year that some of our databases have been compromised in this way! Do let us know if you notice anything odd - such as pop-up dialog boxes, or pages only loading partially - so we can fix problems quickly. Otherwise please enjoy the sites.

Some of you may remember from my last blog that I mentioned that the Museum of London websites were changing inline with our rebranding to bring together our  venues and values, with new names and logos. We have now completed phase one of redesigning and moving around content on our websites. You can check out our striking new logos and our redesigned websites at:

• www.museumoflondon.org.uk
• www.museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands
• www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archaeology

In phase two and three, we will be auditing all our websites, holding audience evaluations to find out what our visitors think, and planning and implementing the migration of all our websites into one single site. This will involve analysis of our current website structures and planning the future architecture and redesigning of all the templates within our websites, including our microsites.

We would love to find out what you think of the websites and how it might develop in the future. So tell us what you think of the sites and the new ‘tabs’ that combine all our three venues together by sending me your comments to: webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

Please note that we are aware some things may not display properly or some links may be broken, but please bear with us while we go through this transition period.

Thank you for all your continued support.

  Bone changes caused by infection and bacteria, as well as the broken bones and fractures resulting from injury are often seen in skeletal analysis of past populations. Another type of disease observed are those that reflect the diet an individual had during their life. Poor diets can lead to many health problems and illnesses, and the types of food eaten may also cause changes in the bones. A lack of nutrients such as vitamin C and D in the diet may lead to metabolic disorders, such as scurvy and rickets. These can affect growth and prevent the development of strong and healthy bones. Diets too rich in certain foods may also lead to illness.

   One such diseases is gout, this results from a build up of uric acid in the body and may be associated with a high alcohol intake and diet rich in protein and fatty foods (Roberts and Manchester 2005). Crystals of uric acid may form in the joints and lead to inflammation. This can affect the joints of most limbs but is most commonly observed in the first metatarsophalangeal joint (big toe), causing joint pain and stiffness. Over a period of time this swelling may lead to erosion of the bone at the joint. This can be seen in skeletal remains as punched out lesions with overhanging edges (Rogers and Waldron 1995).  Six adult individuals (6/268: 2.2%) from the Catholic mission of Saints Mary and Michael, Whitechapel, London, displayed evidence of gout. All had erosive lesions of the big toe.

 Another disease that may be related to a rich diet and obesity is Diffuse idiopathic hyperostosis or DISH. This is caused by the ossification (turning to bone) of ligaments in the spine and other sites of the body such as areas of tendon and muscle attachments. This can result in individual vertebrae of the spine becoming fused together, with the new bone having the appearence of dripping candle wax (Rogers and Waldron 1995). Two males, both aged over 46 years at death were diagnosed with DISH in the Saints Mary and Michael cemetery population. Both showed the typical fusion of over four continuous vertebrae.

The occurrence of these diseases, when compared to an entire cemetery population, can help us to learn about and understand the health and lifestyle of people in the past. They may help reveal the types of diets eaten,  the foods available, and make inferences about a populations background and status. 

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration. 

This month artist Emily Candela worked with the group to create a huge temporary sculpture inspired by the Museum of London’s 1559 painting, Nimrod supervising the construction of the Tower of Babel by Martin Van Valckenborgh.

Liam, a member of the group explains how the sculpture was made:

‘This months Late:Create was sculpture. The inspiration was a building called the Tower of Babel. Instead of copying it from a picture we covered it in all kinds of materials so it symbolises the building giving it a new artistic look. I hope you can see the resemblance!’

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and sculpture.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk