WPI Students in Bristol & Lincoln: Online Exhibitions and Robots!
Hello, this is the team of students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) checking in again! In the last two weeks we’ve been continuing our work on online exhibitions for the ITP. We also got the chance to visit some cities outside of London that some ITP fellows will be familiar with…
The WPI team outside Bristol Cathedral
We spent one day in Bristol and visited M Shed, part of ITP UK Partner Bristol Museums. We were able to speak with Sue Giles, Senior Curator British Empire & Commonwealth Collection at Bristol Museums, who had some very helpful information about our website, survey, and curating in general. Sue has been working with the group of five ITP fellows on developing the content for the Bristol: the Bigger Picture online exhibition, which we will be putting online.
Sue also gave us tips of some museums that we should visit while in the UK such as the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum. After talking with Sue, we explored the beautiful port city of Bristol and were able to grab dinner along the River Avon. In fact, we liked Bristol so much that we plan to visit again!
Lindsey, the robot tour guide!
The following week, we went to ITP UK Partner The Collection Lincoln & Usher Gallery. We were able to see an amazing piece of technology being used in museums! There is a robot tour guide in one of the galleries that visitors can interact with to learn more about the museum’s artefacts. We met with Jenny Gleadell (Exhibitions and Interpretation Officer) and Chris Cullen (Digital Development Officer), as well as Francesco Del Duchetto, a PhD student working on the robot. They gave us a tour of the museum and were able to answer our questions about the robot. We were able to have some great conversations about the future of technology in a museum setting! Here is some more information about the robot: https://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/robot-at-the-collection
It was great for us to spend sometime at other museums outside of London and talk to some interesting people! We look forward to more experiences like this while we are here!
Jacob, Cormac, Matthew and Michael