Precious Cargo is a project led by young people, inspired by Yorkshire's world collections. It is part of Stories of the World, one of the projects at the heart of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Young Consultants
During the summer of 2010 groups of young people engaged with Precious Cargo projects to deliver a consultancy programme (observations, interpretation, advice and recommendations) to a range of seven partner museums across Yorkshire. Their consultancy advice was focused on exploring opportunities for developing youth engagement, exhibitions and events and world collections.
Examples of what the Young Consultants did with the participating museums included:
- Tours of whole museum/sites
- Handling world collections objects for potential display
- Visiting collections stores
- Structured Q&A sessions about how to engage young people; which objects where interesting to them and what the Young Consultants thought about ideas for Precious Cargo exhibitions and events
According to Simon Cantrill, one of the young people involved with the project, aims of Precious Cargo were, 'To increase communication and collaboration between the two groups and to start to create strong working relationships that could be built upon for not only the duration of the Precious Cargo projects, but for the future.'
Another essential part of the project was to develop young peoples' voice and influence in museums through group consultancy visits to Precious Cargo partner museums.
Widening youth engagement
The museums taking part in the project had in the past experienced difficulties in engaging with young people. They often struggled to get them 'through the door', which made engagement, which could lead to consultations on finding out what they wanted, very difficult. Most of the museums visited felt that young people were under-represented and wanted to gain an understanding into what a 'young person' would want and for that to be clearly visible in their Precious Cargo exhibition.
Jon Bradley, Communities Manager at Museums Sheffield said, 'The young people were given the opportunity to speak directly with curators through group consultancy visits to participating Precious Cargo partner museums, gain a glimpse into the workings of a museum and the proposed collection for their Precious Cargo exhibitions. For the participating museums it was an opportunity to gain access to the thoughts and opinions of a diverse group of young people who activity engage themselves with museums.'
The advice provided by the young consultants has been taken on board by the museums and they intend to make changes and use suggestions given. Evidence of this will be demonstrated in the finished exhibits.
As Jon said, 'We worked with a great group of young people who we felt benefitted from the project as much as the museums. They really got into their consultancy roles and it was great to the see less confident ones becoming more vocal.'
For more information on this case study please visit the MLA Research Website.