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| Brampton Museum Cold and Frost Morning Newcastle-Under-Lyme - Jan 2021 |
Value noun: The value of something such as a quality, attitude, or method is its importance or usefulness. If you place a particular value on something, that is the importance or usefulness you think it has
Value verb: If you value something or someone, you think that they are important and you appreciate them. Collins Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english At a time like this many of us reflect on what we value or what we used to value. This can range from personal relationships to materiality. The picture above is Newcastle-Under-Lyme's Brampton Museum which I value, in many ways, as a museum, as a building, for its open grounds, for being part of my daily walk, for allowing me to imagine that I might be in another city because of its victorian houses and mature tree framing, and the way it alternates in different weather and light. For my research, I have been reading a lot about heritage values. We cannot hide from the fact that what we perceive as valuable within a heritage context is socially, economically, and culturally biased. Paradoxically, most of the values I have listed above for why the Brampton is of value to me, apart from it being a museum and the Victorian houses are not related to heritage. However, it could possibly be argued if the Brampton Museum was not there, if 'The Firs' the home to the Mosley family, who ran a drapery business in Newcastle, had not been acquired by the Borough Council in 1956 and opened as a museum and art gallery, none of my personal values associated with the museum would exist. If we entered the museum, which we cannot at the moment, which I have many times, the design and layout of the interior, the exhibitions, that reflect the social and economic history of the area, as well the presentation of the collections, resonate, as with other museums. These similarities with other museums are presented with unthreatening familiarity, although its small exhibition space has been creatively utilised. I am all too aware that small museums are challenged financially (although it is currently expanding which is good news), and I possibly value their existence more than what they hold. I feel extremely fortunate to have the Brampton less than 10 minutes away from my home. I am also well aware of how people in the locale have valued its existence in particular its grounds for walking, sledging, and picnicking at this time. It cannot be denied that the intangible values of the museum are interwoven with its tangible existence. If we were to survey those visiting the museum grounds and how they value the museum, it would be interesting to see how many references there were to what the museum has or holds, or how much they focus on the museum just being there. For me the museum just being there is enough, the freedom to look at it, to walk its grounds, letting my imagination run, without entering into a critical discourse about its existence, and I think I am not alone in this.  |