Spring 2023 Rural Voices Seminar Series

The  Museums Network is delighted to present the Spring 2023 Rural Voices Seminar Series. Online via Zoom and free to RMN members, join them to hear expert speakers and museum professionals share how rural collections and rural sites can better include a wider range of voices in the stories they tell.

Thursday 2 March, 3.00pm
In Your Words – Breathing new life into the Survey of English Dialect

The Dialect and Heritage Project is a national project based on a partnership between the University of Leeds and five member museums of the Rural Museums Network. Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we have been taking dialect and heritage resources out of the archive and putting them back into the local communities where they truly belong. At the same time, we have been encouraging members of the public to share their present-day dialect with us. The project has tapped into massive public appetite for sharing dialect leading to huge media coverage. In this talk, we will introduce you to the rich dialect archives held at the University of Leeds, explain what the project has been up to and how you can access the resources, hear from museum partners about what they have got out of it, and think about where we might be headed next. Tickets here. 

Thursday 20 April, 3.00pm
Utilising Intangible Cultural Heritage to actively support rural crafts 

Heritage Crafts is the national charity for traditional crafts skills and the only UNESCO-accredited ICH NGO in the UK focusing solely on the domain of traditional craftsmanship. Daniel Carpenter, Executive Director of Heritage Crafts, and Greta Bertram, Curator at the Crafts Study Centre, will talk about the work of the organisation and the way in which it has partnered with museums to raise awareness of Intangible Cultural Heritage, as well as the challenges museums face in incorporating ICH into their offering in a way that actively supports the continuation of embodied craft knowledge, skills and practices. Tickets here.

Thursday 4 May, 2.00pm
Disability in rural museums – Past and present narratives 

We’re joined by two guest speakers to explore how rural museums can better represent D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in our museums and using our collections. Karen Sayer, Professor at Leeds Trinity University, askes how might we discover the history of disability in rural museums, and Emily Goff, Project Manager at Curating for Change, looks at how rural museums can enable and retain a more diverse work force, essential for museums to remain relevant for themselves and their communities. Tickets here.