“How did you guys meet?”
“We were both studying the same course”
“Which course was that?”
“Museum Studies. It’s a vocation course which teaches you how to go work in museums as a curator, an exhibition designer or a collections officer, anything to do with museums.”
"It’s a big thing with museums now where they’ve started to professionalise and push aside the old curators of yesteryear who were maybe stuck in older practices”
“What’s the difference between old and new curators?”
“The main difference is standards and professionalism. For example, curators in the past wouldn’t think twice about selling valuable works of art to someone else, but now there is an emphasis on retaining them, looking after them for the future generations and even lending them out to other museums.”



This afternoon, I headed into town to take some portraits for an event entitled ‘Anywhere in Leeds’. The project is the brainchild of Malú Colorín, a final year graphic arts and design student and it aims to provide an alternative and playful guide to Leeds. My job was no different to capturing a subject for HOL, but the interviews concentrated on Leeds-related questions, and their relationship with the city. These will be up on the ‘Anywhere in Leeds’ website once I’ve processed the images and written the accompanying blurb so look out for them!

In between this assignment, I was also on the lookout for a ‘human’ and who should walk into the Corn Exchange but Mhairi and Eli. Dressed as they were, I didn’t waste a moment in asking them for a photo which they thankfully obliged to. We had a long chat about museums as they both studied Museum Studies. A course I had both never heard of or knew existed, and both were kind enough to explain what it was and how it was applicable in real life museums.

Eli is the collections officer at the Gerka museum in Winchester, while Mhairi is the costume interpreter at the Jorvic Viking Centre in York, which I have seen and heard of but never been. I hope to remedy that soon, after the useful information provided by Mhairi.


Humans of Leeds