Working with the HUB

A report by Meg Thomas

I have been taking part in a series of workshops run by four museums;The Museum of London, the Horniman Museum, the Transport Museum and the Geffrye Museum. These four museums form the London Hub, after much searching I have come to the conclusion that HUB means just that, the centre of a wheel, set up in summer of 2002, that consists of these Museum of in te London area and is not some strange acronym. The Hub has been set up to encourage museums to share expertise, and possibly to get greater funding from Central Government; not only for the large museums but also for smaller local museums. ... the London Hub partners on this element of its work.

The group are currently working to flesh-out the proposals of the a sounding board and means of communicating with the wider museum community.

The title of the workshops was "SAY IT AGAIN, SAY IT DIFFERENTLY".

This is a key project run by the London Hub "to develop best practice in terms of the use of language in museum displays."

This project has come at most appropriate time for us, as we have been planning to look at renewing many of the exhibits in the museum.

So we can look on the recent break down of the heating system and forced closure of the museum as more of an opportunity than a disaster.

As part of the workshop we spent one day at each of the four museums that make up the London Hub.

The morning sessions consisted of talks covering the use of language in museums. We discussed what kind of language to use and how technical that language should be. We talked about the size of labels and the print size used, and the most appropriate position for, labels.

After lunch we were let loose in the museum to look critically at their professionally and expensively designed exhibits. We were to list "the good,the bad and the ugly". As part of the exercise we were also had to observe other museum users.

I found the whole exercise very enlightening, and I hope I will be able to use what I have learned as we refurbish the museum.

Meg Thomas

Horniman Museum and Gardens
One of the London Hub Museums.

London's Transport Museum
One of the London Hub Museums.