Category Archives for Audiences

A Hundred Feet Through the Door – A Chance Encounter with some Centipedes set me on a Curatorial Path…

Written by Dan Gordon, Keeper of Biology, The Great North Museum: Hancock.

So, how did I get started in museums? Like perhaps many people, it began with a stroke of luck.

I’d decided to study Biology at university—I suppose I’d vaguely pictured myself at some point in the future, white-coated in the lab, pouring over spectrophotometer readings or agar plates. But by the end of the first year, I found myself staring out of the window during practicals. Nineteen-year-old me was slowly becoming disillusioned: Botany was biochemistry; Zoology was elegant mathematics; even Ecology was really an intricate forest of statistics, not trees. There was beauty in the numbers, but it was all a long way from my childhood passion for birdwatching, rock pooling and reading travel books. One day, peering at smudges on a petri dish and trying to work out if I’d just induced gene expression, I realised I might not be cut out for that imagined future. I was fascinated by the soul of the subject, but the finer points of its language were losing their magic.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2025

Compiled by Ellie Clark, Collections Moves Team Leader at the Natural History Museum, London.

Welcome to the May edition of NatSCA Digital Digest

Digital Digest is a monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

Registration Now Open for SHNH International Summer Meeting

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the two-day international meeting ‘A Sense of Nature’. The conference will explore the intersections of the senses – including sight (vision), sound (hearing), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation) and touch (tactile perception) – with the history of natural history.

The event will be at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow on 19th June and 20th June 2025. The conference will feature 12 papers across six sessions, as well as collections tours and an optional conference dinner.

Full details are available here. Registration will close at 6pm (BST) on 28th of May 2025.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – April 2025

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Co-ordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Welcome to the April edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

New Unnatural History Museum Sessions

The Unnatural History Museum brings together museum professionals, creatives and academics across disciplines to platform vital conversations about the museum mediation of the natural world during the sixth mass extinction. The series unfolds over a series of themed Zoom sessions featuring short presentations, followed by a roundtable discussion.

Links to upcoming sessions can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/o/verity-burke-53923741293 and will continue to be updated as more events are added.

The event series now has a website where recordings of prior sessions will be uploaded and you can check out upcoming events: https://unnaturalhistorymuseum.org/

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NatSCA Digital Digest – March 2025

Compiled by Olivia Beavers, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

Welcome to the March edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

NatSCA Annual Conference & AGM 2025: Registration Now OPEN!

Booking is open for the 2025 Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) conference. This year’s theme is: Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections, and it will be hosted by the University of Manchester: Manchester Museum, UK.

Due to the size of the venue there are only a limited number of spaces, so please book promptly to avoid disappointment. Visit the webpage to find out more: https://www.natsca.org/event/2881

This year’s conference meal is at Zouk and we would love to see you there. Please make sure to add the separate ticket to your basket.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you any questions. If you would like to become a member, which would qualify you for the conference discount or bursaries, please see our website NatSCA.org for details. 

30th Symposium on Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation: Call for abstracts

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words plus an image to sppc@geocurator.org by 10th April. Abstracts will be considered on any topic of earth science excavation, conservation, preparation mount-making and exhibition. Please state if the abstract is for a poster or platform presentation.

The 30th Symposium on Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation will be held in the Netherlands this year on 26 – 27th June.

The theme will be ‘From Excavation to Exhibition’ and they hope to broaden their usual remit to include more aspects of the story of how geological collections end up on display in our museums, as well as their conservation and preparation. Examples of previous years’ abstracts can be found online at https://www.geocurator.org/events/97-sppc

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65 Million Years in the Making, Five Seconds to Explain

Written by Callum Smart, a natural history volunteer at Bolton Museum. He works both in the stores, documenting the collections, and in the gallery engaging with visitors using the objects to start conversations. Here he shares his experience of one afternoon with a school group.

It’s Wednesday afternoon at Bolton Museum and I have just finished setting up the fossil touch tray, a selection of ancient artefacts for visitors to get hands on with. A school trip marches through the atrium, passing the gift shop with furtive glances, heading towards the wonderful Egyptian exhibits. The children clutch their worksheets, a scavenger hunt checklist filled with items from around the museum’s galleries. They whisper to each other, checking if they’ve missed anything in the Bolton’s History gallery and making bold claims over what they’ll find in the next room.

Callum at the object handling table with the fossil touch tray speaking to visitors. © Bolton Museum

A few of them spot the fossils on my trolley and start to stop, blurting out questions, weighing up whether to reach out and touch the strange rocks. I’d love for kids to interact with the fossils, it’s why I’m there. But I also don’t want to distract them from their trip, so I’m grateful when the teacher steers them on. Their teacher asks if I would be able to talk to the children about the fossils when they finish in the Egypt gallery. “Of course,” I say, “I’d be happy to.”

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