Jen Kavanagh is the Audience Engagement Manager for Information Age, a new gallery about the history of information and communication opening in Autumn 2014.
Last year, I wrote a blog post about the telegram collecting project which has been taking place to support the Information Age gallery development. This project is now nearing an end, with over 350 telegrams collected as digital scans by our amazing group of community collectors from across the UK.
These telegrams will now be narrowed down to a short list of highlights, spanning a range of subject areas and covering stories and people from across the UK. The final selection will be displayed on a screen in the new gallery, allowing our visitors to get a sense of why telegrams were sent over the decades and what messages they contained.
For now, here is a sneak preview of one of them. This telegram was sent by Mr Ross to his wife in November 1902, having just found out he’d been awarded a Nobel Prize.
I wanted to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to the volunteers who worked with us on the project across the Science Museum and our five partner museums (The Cardiff Story, National Museums Scotland, The Riverside Museum in Glasgow, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and the National Railway Museum). I also wanted to provide them with the opportunity to share their thoughts on what they learned from the project. Here are some thoughts from three of the community collectors.
“What I enjoyed the most about the project was organising the collecting event and getting to hear all the participants’ stories. It was great to work with Heather at Riverside too, I learnt so much relating to Glasgow Museums’ collection. Overall it was an amazing experience, getting to know people from all over the UK and being able to visit the Science Museum.” Elena, Riverside Museum, Glasgow.
“The most surprising thing I learned from the telegram collecting project was that about 100 years ago people used telegrams as we do use Email today: to let people know if they will be late, to order things, to make sure you get picked up from a train etc. It’s amazing how special and dear the telegrams are to the people who own them today, be it that they wrote or received them or inherited them, telegrams are a little treasure to the owners. I really enjoyed engaging in the people’s stories and lives, getting more curious and pulled into the story behind the telegram was my favourite part of the work on the project.” Maja, Science Museum, London.
“The highs have been the excitement of the discoveries through the sheer colour and design of telegrams, the discoveries of stories which have touched the heart and which have international, national and local historical impacts. This has been an incredible journey. It has been a privilege to share in the life stories of others and be part of that sharing of these with a wider audience. I have taken away from this project the pleasure and privilege of being part of a Team. The project has given me the opportunity to develop my research skills and has reinforced for me the advantages gained from networking and collaborative work.” John, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall.