National Museums Liverpool Blog - world museum liverpool

If I could be described as anything it certainly wouldn’t have the words ‘Queen of..’ used as a prefix, it would probably be ‘pain in the ..’. However there are people who definitely deserve to be given such a praising pseudonym.

For example on Natural World on BB2 last Wednesday evening biologist Andrea Marshall was given the nickname ‘Queen of the Mantas’. This is deservedly so, as the documentary showed Andrea giving up everything for a life in Mozambique to study the endangered species of Manta Rays (to watch again click on the iplayer)

Although she would probably blush at the thought of it, Andrea reminded me of Rachel Ball, our aquarium curator at World Museum. Although she hasn’t left her life in the North West to save Manta Rays in a far flung part of the world she is making an effort to help conserve Thornback Rays.  The Thornback’s have been decreasing in numbers since the 1980’s so Rachel, her team and volunteer anglers are tagging rays in the name of conservation project RayWatch in the River Mersey and Liverpool Bay in order to track them. With this in mind perhaps Rachel should be dubbed Queen of the Thornbacks?

To get involved in RayWatch you can sponsor a ray, to do so either call 0151 478 4918 or visit www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/raywatch

As you will probably be aware from reading this blog over the years, there are many unsung heroes in our staff who put in a lot of effort behind the scenes to ensure that our exhibitions and events go off without a hitch. There are lots of examples of the handling and transport team hard at work in the Moving stories set of photos on Flickr.

With all that hard work, it's good to know that they have some light hearted fun occasionally, as the latest photos show. Their latest major project has been to dismantle the displays from The Beat Goes On exhibition, which closed recently. Handling and transport technician Paul Kelly took the opportunity to become a rock star with a giant guitar prop, while the joiners Jerry and Steve took a ride on a rather realistic 2-dimensional scooter.

Those of you who live locally might already have heard about the imminent arrival of over 100 penguins to the streets and venues of Liverpool. Go Penguins! launches on 22 November, and National Museums Liverpool is providing homes for 13 of the happy but slightly homesick birds. They include 'Moon Waddler', aka Neil Flipstrong, at World Museum, while the Maritime is hosting 'Under the Sea' penguin. This photograph was taken at the secret penguin storage facility and shows another of our arrivals, 'Look at Me' (front left) along with some of his feathered friends.

Each of the birds has been created by either local artists, schools or community groups and adopted by a local organisation. Together they form A Winter's Trail which you'll be able to follow around the city centre, making Liverpool a proper Capital of Christmas.

As well as our usual programme of festive activities and events we'll be hosting a series of special penguin events that are guaranteed to keep the kids amused over the Christmas holidays. We're even creating a dedicated penguin shop at World Museum. There'll be more on our penguins and our other Christmas activities on our main site shortly. In the meantime there's more penguin information on the official Go Penguins! website.  

Update: Should have mentioned that some of the penguins have already been sighted in an Antony Gormley-esque arrangement on New Brighton beach (more on the Art in Liverpool website). Local comedian, Paul O'Grady, has also created his own, 'Owl Ma Penguin', and the BBC website has a slide show of some of the other designs you'll soon be seeing round and about.

I thought my school days were over, but last week I was very excited to be able to join our class of Little Liverpool Designers on their very first school trip!

I had a lovely morning spent with Class R reception class from Kingsley Community School in Toxteth, touring Liverpool familiarising themselves with Liverpool’s famous landmarks to inspire artwork for the Museum of Liverpool’s dedicated children’s gallery Little Liverpool, opening 2011.

They will be working with illustrator Kate Pankhurst to develop the final artwork for display in Little Liverpool as part of our work with the ECHO in the Community programme, which aims to inspire young people by engaging in a cross section of activities, including the arts.

At four years old, Mrs Randles’ reception class were a credit to their school, and it was fantastic to be surrounded by such young, inquisitive minds who were visibly impressed by everything they saw.

The first stop on our magical mystery tour of Liverpool was at the Anglican Cathedral, and I only wish I’d had a video camera with me to record their faces on walking into that grand, vast space and filling the air ‘wows’!

We also took a trip to the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, or Paddy’s Wigwam as it is affectionately known locally, where they were very taken with the colours and reflections coming in from the beautiful stain glass windows. Hopefully this will transfer to the marvellous artwork they’re soon to create for our Little Liverpool Gallery.

After the cathedrals, we also took a driving tour round many iconic buildings, including St George’s Hall and William Brown Street; home to World Museum, Central Library and the Walker Art Gallery.

Spotting the Radio City Tower overhead, our whistle-stop tour also took us past the Town Hall – "where the mayor lives" – and down to the waterfront where we met Museum of Liverpool buildings operations manager Martin Hemmings – "Bob the Builder" – and had a look at the location for Little Liverpool.

A lovely day out was had by all, so thanks goes to Mrs Randles and her ‘helpers’ for organising the trip, and for inviting Julia Bryan from the Museum of Liverpool team and I along. We look forward to seeing the wonderful artwork that Class R create in their roles as Little Liverpool Designers.

This Saturday (24 October) World Museum is running several events designed for our visually impaired visitors. Each is based around our highly successful 'The Beat Goes On' exhibition and covers the people, objects and stories behind Liverpool music history.

Events kick off at 12 noon (there's a full list of sessions on the exhibition events page), and you'll need to collect tickets from our information desk as places are limited. For more information contact the information desk on 0151 478 4353.

For all those who hate creepy crawlies a new trail around World Museum’s Bug House might just give you a new insight and appreciation for smallest members of the animal kingdom.
 
Designed for young children the Nature Boy story trail is inspired by a real life six year old boy named Daniel Walsh, who calls himself Nature Boy because of his love for bugs and insects. The trail follows Nature Boy and his sister Eva, otherwise known as Bug Bully, through the Bug House as Dan explains to Eva why we should be kind to our bugs and insects.

Working with National Museums Liverpool’s Community Partnership team and illustrator Holly Langley, the new trail was created by young mums from the Children’s Services Teenage Pregnancy Support Service group at Ellergreen Children’s Centre.

Even the babies of the young mums had a part to play with the bug characters in the trail named after them.

Links between Ireland and Latin America might not be immediately obvious but a lovely and thought-provoking display of textiles in World Museum's community base will give visitors an opportunity to explore them.

Embroidered quilts from Ireland and a selection of arpilleras (pronounced “ar-pee-air-ahs”); three-dimensional appliqué textiles from Latin America, depict the experiences of ordinary people living their lives in extreme circumstances. Some of the Irish quilts were created by women directly affected during 'the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and demonstrate both their feelings of loss and their hope for peace within their community.

Most of the Chilean arpilleras were made during the country’s dictatorship (1973 - 1990). Many of these textiles depict the experiences of people living during that difficult time and reflect their determination and courage.

The vibrant and colourful pieces, also cover topics such as community, daily life and family.

For more information about the quilts see here.

The Guinness Liverpool Irish Festival runs from 16 October – 1 November 2009. For more information about events throughout the city visit www.liverpoolirishfestival.com.

Here is Laura Healy from our Development Office to tell us why she is mad about Thornback Rays and how you can support our RayWatch project to help protect them.

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According to local anglers, October is the best month to find Thornback Rays in the River Mersey. One of the most popular animals on display at World Museum's aquarium in Liverpool, they are also the focus of our new public appeal called RayWatch.  

We're working with the Sharktrust to tag Thornback Rays in the Liverpool Bay area and monitor them in the wild. I work in the Development Office and volunteer in the aquarium so I've been making 'Ray Champion' packs and I'm currently on-call to go on an all-day tagging trip on the Mersey once the weather is right!

It's funny how many people don't realise we have Thornback Rays in the Mersey. I'm excited that RayWatch is going to help us learn more about the rays and most importantly, how we can help to protect them. 

The first thing I noticed about the Thornbacks when I saw them at World Museum, was that they are such a beautiful colour. They are covered in a pattern quite similar to that of a leopard. They also have thorny tails (hence their name!), which aren’t dangerous to humans. I've been told that Thornbacks rays aren’t actually rays at all – they are skates, who lay eggs rather than give birth to live young.  

For £10 you can adopt a ray; add your Thornback Ray's name to our RayWatch web page and get updates on it's location and the whole RayWatch project. For £25 you can become a Ray Champion. In addition to adopting a ray, you also get a cuddly ray toy (pictured) and a family ticket for a behind the scenes tour of the aquarium at World Museum in Liverpool.  

I'm telling all my friends and family about RayWatch - it's for a great cause - so join me in supporting our conservation effort!

Here is Phil Lewis our Aquarium & Bughouse Assistant to tell you about the forthcoming Shark Week at the World Museum...

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European Shark Week runs from Saturday 10 to Sunday 18 October when we'll have an array of activities at the World Museum's Clore Natural History Centre. There will be badge making for children and lots of posters and pockets guides to give away, with information about sharks and rays.  All the drawings of the various species that are produced by visitors during the week, will be mounted on the wall to form a huge mural. 

You can also come to several presentations delivered by our very enthusiastic aquarium staff at the Treasure House Theatre. These will focus on the status of sharks in the wild with lots of interesting shark and ray facts and plenty of interaction with the audience!  The dates for these presentations are: Sunday 11, Tuesday 13, Friday 16, Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October.
 
The purpose of Shark Week is to raise awareness about the tens of millions of sharks and rays that are slaughtered each year. This is due to unsustainable fishing practices and a desire for shark fin soup, which is an extremely cruel and wasteful practice. Sharks which have just had there fins cut off are then thrown overboard still alive and left to die slowly. 

In Europe alone, thousands of tonnes of sharks are landed each year accounting for 27 percent of the slaughter world wide.  This is an appalling example set by the EU, which other nations may look to for guidance and influence.  They are also fished commercially for their meat and liver oil used in lamps, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and vitamin supplements.  Harvesting these animals is unsustainable as sharks and rays grow slowly and have few offspring, making it impossible for them to recover from such exploitation.  As sharks in particular usually receive negative media coverage, due to rare attacks on humans, it is very hard to lobby support for this group of animals than it is for other groups of endangered animals. 

This is why Shark Week is so important in raising awareness and bringing these issues to the forefront of public imagination. These animals have been around for 400 million years - that's 200 million years before the dinosaurs - and they deserve better than this.

We hope to see you there so you can find out more about these incredible animals!

Alas, unlike the beat itself, this exhibition doesn't go on and on. We're into the final weeks of World Museum's The Beat Goes On exhibition and what a tune-tastic time we've had.

Paul McCartney's trousers made a visit as did half a million members of the public. Local bands had their tunes profiled in our on-gallery and online jukeboxes (check out the MySpace page and have a listen). Willing volunteers cut their museum teeth on the gallery, and we launched an online resource charting Liverpool's musical heritage.

But fret not! (fret...music...geddit?) You've still until 1 November to get down to the museum and to get down!  Take your kids during half term and show them what real music sounds like. And if you still need persuading the Guardian's video on Liverpool's music scene should do the trick.

And if you still don't manage to catch the exhibition you're going to have to wait until the Museum of Liverpool opens in 2011. The Creative City gallery will become home to items like the Woolton church stage where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met in 1957, the vibrant 'All You Need is Love' bedcover from John and Yoko’s Bed-in-for-Peace in Montreal in 1969, and four Beatles stage suits.

And as it's the final month The Beat Goes On exhibition guide has been reduced to half price so now costs just £1.50. Get your copy in our groundfloor shop.

Fay and Charlotte, two of our dedicated youth volunteers in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool, have both achieved their v50 Award certificate, having completed 50 hours volunteering each. Congratulations to both and a big thank you for all their hard work talking to the many visitors who have visited the exhibition this year.

If you are aged 16-25 and would like to find out more about youth volunteering at our museums please contact Claire Olson, Youth Volunteer Officer. You can also find out more on the v-inspired website. 

A few words from Fay and Charlotte:
 
"Volunteering at The Beat Goes On has provided me with valuable experience of working in a museum and has also helped me develop other skills such as communication and customer care. Working towards my v50 award gave me something to aim for and I am very pleased that I have achieved this goal." Fay
 
"Working on The Beat Goes On exhibition has given me the chance to combine my interest in museums with my love of music. Volunteering at the museum has given me the chance to gain experience and insight into different aspects of museum work, which will be useful for a future career in this area of work." Charlotte

Ever wondered what it's like to handle ancient artefacts, care for unusual creatures or produce an exhibition of wonderful artworks?

If you have a question about our museums, galleries or collections then take part in Ask the curator, which gives you the chance to ask our featured curator anything you like.

Next in line to answer your questions is Aquarium Curator, Rachel Ball. Rachel looks after the collections in the World Museum's aquarium, which is teeming with fish and other sea life from Australia to Anglesey.

She also leads important projects outside of the museum for the conservation of species that are in decline, such as Thornback Rays.

Send in your questions by midnight on Sunday 4 October and we'll choose the best ones to ask Rachel in a video interview, which we'll put on the site soon.

You can ask the curator a question using this online form.

A rare skeleton of the Dodo went on display in the Atrium at World Museum Liverpool today. The specimen is made up of bones found on Mauritius and has been in the collection since 1866, however it's not been on display for at least 40 years. The skeleton is on display for about a month as part of the museum’s popular Hidden Treasures series of displays featuring items rarely seen by the public.

Dr Clem Fisher, curator of vertebrate zoology, says: “The skeleton is quite complete although we have recently discovered that the foot bones have been skilfully carved from wood.” The Dodo is also missing the top of its head (cranium).

The Dodo was a member of the pigeon family that lived on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Unfortunately it was also a rather tasty and flightless member so fell foul of the human and animal population. It's been extinct for more than 300 years with the last reliable sighting in about 1693. When alive they were rather large birds standing about three feet (one metre) tall and weighing around 50 pounds (about 23kg). They had grey plumage, a nine-inch beak with a hooked point, tiny wings and a tuft of curly rear feathers.

Money can't buy love but who cares when you can go out any buy the latest line of Beatle merchandise. Beatlemania is back and this time it means business - big business!  Remastered versions of each of the albums have been released and are expected to dominate the charts for the next few weeks. And there’s two enviable box sets – one limited edition remastered in mono, the other in stereo.They were released on 09.09.09 - most auspicious because of John’s obsession with the number 9. 

Not that merchandising is a new thing of course. If you venture over to The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum you can see some of the weird and wonderful Beatle articles from our collection that were produced during the original wave of Beatlemania including Russian Dolls, talc and this rather nifty pair of sneakers.  

The latest must-have Beatles purchase is of course the Beatles Rock Band game. Now I’m no gamer – but I admit this amazing animation has got my purse strings twitching. Who could fail to enjoy this – it's compelling viewing, it even has penguins! The animation is part of the re-launched Beatles.com which has been absolutely crammed full of video, tunes, photos and memorabilia just incase you’re not Beatled up enough.

Anyhow, in the words of the Blue Peter, ‘here’s one we made earlier’. Beatles-themed games they most certainly are, Beatles Rock Band they are not. But they are still a lot of fun, they don’t cost anything and you don’t need any additional kit to play. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm in favour of playing a real guitar. After all, that’s how the boys started out and a very profitable investment it turned out to be for them.

This weekend our wonderful group of Discovery Volunteers each received their v50 Award Certificate, having completed 50 hours volunteer work at World Museum Liverpool during the summer.
 
Our fantastic Discovery Volunteers have been based on the World Cultures gallery throughout August. During this time they used objects from our handling collections to chat to many visitors - if you visited during the summer, you may even have chatted to some of them yourself!
 
The Discovery Volunteers project was aimed specifically at young people aged 16-25; to encourage younger people to become more actively involved in their museums as part of our youth volunteering scheme. As one of our young volunteers explained, the project "has shown that young people are still willing to listen, learn and teach; despite all the negative press".
 
Each of the volunteers received training from our curatorial and learning teams before finally being let loose on gallery to meet their public!
 
The volunteers team would like to say a big thank you each of the 20 young volunteers who offered their time, commitment and endless enthusiasm throughout the project.
 
More information about v, the v50 Award and youth volunteering can be found on the v-inspired website.

Bug House Demonstrator, Rebekah Beresford, is back again to tell us about her latest project in the Bug House at World Museum Liverpool. This time she has been giving the Hermit Crabs' vivarium a make-over! You can see the photos from each stage of the project on our Bug House Flickr set.

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After the success of the Indian Ground Beetles display earlier this year it was decided that some of our other vivariums could also do with a revamp! The Bug House hasn’t kept any mantids for over a year now and they’re incredibly popular with the visitors - so the next vivarium on the list was their display.

The new vivarium arrived from Exo Terra and was made by leading experts in the world of exotics. We got to work on siliconing in a glass partition, a third of the way along the tank to create a fresh water pool. Hermit crabs require fresh water so that they can mix it with salt water. The crabs then pull up into their shells their own preferred salinity reservoir from which they can breathe through. The fresh water pool in this vivarium will house a variety of aquatic invertebrates such as apple snails and gammarus (shrimp-like amphipods). The pool will also be useful for maintaining the humidity in the tank.

Coming from the Caribbean, these Hermit Crabs require humidity of around 70%. Hermit Crabs are avid climbers so it was important to factor this in to the design. A polystyrene wall made to look like rock work was ideal. It was easy to cut and wedged into place perfectly down one side of the vivarium. With some plants and bark attached the crabs would have plenty to climb and perch on.

Once the silicone had dried we tested it for leaks and luckily there weren't any! The pool was filled with gravel and the waterfall was set in place. The waterfall runs with a small pump set inside it. It’ll make the finished vivarium look quite impressive.

Hermit Crabs are renowned for being boisterous and particularly clumsy, so it was necessary to silicone some bark along the rim of the glass partition. This would prevent substrate from being kicked into the pool and also to allow leverage for the crabs to pull themselves out.

Whilst this was setting I had time to add the substrate to the land area. Hermit crabs dig themselves under ground for protection whilst moulting. Being invertebrates their skeleton is on the outside and moulting their skin to grow is a big deal. In the wild predatory birds could snatch them above ground level so they are forced under ground to do this. Even though hermit crabs are social creatures they are still opportunistic feeders. They would happily eat a moulting crab which would be soft and vulnerable and unable to protect itself, so it was important to factor in plenty of space to avoid this.

The next thing was to rehydrate the coco fibre to mix with the sand. Coco fibre comes from the husk of coconuts and is widely used in vivariums to provide sound air content and moisture in the substrate. The coco fibre was then added to the land area creating a gradient. This could then be mixed together lightly but the crabs would do a good enough job mixing it together themselves.

One of the last requirements for the vivarium was to add the climbing material. Drift wood is perfect for this because it’s so robust. I used smaller pieces along the climbing wall in steps for the hermits to climb over. Before it goes out on display I’ll add some bamboo and extra foliage.

Thanks to Phil from the aquarium, I was able to acquire a rainforest creeper called Devil’s Ivy. It’s commonly seen for sale in garden centres as house plants but its native to Asia. The plant was trained around the drift wood through to the fresh water pool. It’s a climbing plant and clings onto tree bark using its aerial roots. It’s also very hardy so will re-root itself quickly if the hermit crabs dig it up several times.

The Hermit Crab vivarium is now on display in the Bug House so come along and see them in their new home!

I wanted to write something in tribute to Les Paul who died yesterday at the age of 94. Les Paul was a jazz musician who persuaded guitar maker Gibson to create a solid-bodied electric guitar. He’d already cobbled together such a guitar from a railway sleeper and a couple of pick-ups, but when Gibson refined ‘The Log’, the Gibson Les Paul was born. The Gibson Les Paul is an iconic guitar played by some of the most innovative rock guitarists the world has ever seen. Pete Townsend, Jimmy Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Slash to name but a few. I visited The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum to see if any trace of Les Paul’s influence could be found, and although there aren’t any Les Pauls in the exhibition I did find this rather familiar walk-through! (I should mention there are several other splendid guitars such as Will Sergeant's customised Telecaster and one owned by Billy Fury). Perhaps I should have also looked in the recording section because Les Paul also developed revolutionary multi-tracking techniques, but that is another story.

I then popped into St George’s Hall to see ‘For George – A Tribute to George Harrison’. (That's a lot of Georges). If you are a Beatle fan or enjoyed The Beat Goes On then make the effort to see this small but heart-warming exhibition dedicated to George. The display was created by fans for fans and features some lovely pictures, a few taken by Patti Boyd. It is like a little snapshot of all things George – his music projects, his film interests, his racing, Friar Park, The Beatles of course. There’s incense burning and a devotional feel, reflecting George’s dedication to his spiritual development, as well as his fans devotion to him.  It is only a small room but there is a lot to see if you take the time to have a proper look.

In particular I really enjoyed seeing some of the instruments that shaped George’s music, including a rare Gibson longneck banjolele (a cross between ukulele and a banjo) and a sitar. There wasn’t a Les Paul in sight – but it matters not, because here is where we find our Les Paul connection. George is associated with all manner of guitars, such Epiphone, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, and Fender , yet that mellow, rich and warm Les Paul sound will always define one song in particular - ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. The guitar solo was played on a cherry red 1957 Les Paul Standard – a gift from Eric Clapton – which he christened Lucy. (Infact it was Eric that played on the track)

Just put on the record. It’s as fitting tribute as any to Mr Les Paul – and it will explain better than my words just what all the fuss is about.

As I've mentioned many times before, there's never a dull moment for the handling and transport team. Since I last reported on their activities they have safely transported a huge variety of objects from our collections, including ship models, paintings, a stained glass window and some Hindu Gods (well, sculptures of them, anyway). Some have been moved from storage to the conservation studios for treatment and back again, other objects have been gone on or off display and a few have ben loaned to other organisations.

Some of the more unusual jobs have involved taking a whole rack of uniforms to the conservation freezer to treat a possible insect infestation and weighing weapons from the collection in order to determine the floor loadings of planned displays in the new Museum of Liverpool.

On a rare break from work a few weeks ago the team had a sneak preview of the new galleries currently under construction at the Museum of Liverpool. They were all impressed by the scale and design of the building. However in the back of their minds I'm sure they were all thinking the same thing - they'll have their work cut out installing all of the many objects in this huge building in time for the opening.

You can see what they've been up to in the Moving stories Flickr set of photos.

I'm not holding out too much hope of seeing anything that looks like a Perseid tonight. The Beeb is suggesting a fair amount of cloud cover in the vicinity of my house 

In case you don't know the Perseids are an annual meteor shower that occurs when the Earth passes through dust debris from the comet, Swift-Tuttle. It reaches its peak tonight and should be a good show for people lucky enough to live in an area without too much light pollution or cloud cover. Plus you shouldn't need any fancy equipment to either see or photograph them, just look to the north east after dark.

And if you do get to see and photograph any of the shower you might want to tweet on the Astronomy2009 Twitter page - a 48-hour Twitter marathon being run as part of the International Year of Astronomy.

Rain or shine, getting out on the River Mersey is always a fun trip and Curator of Botany, Geraldine Reid, has taken part in one of this year's Mersey Ferry Discovery Cruises. Here she is to tell us more about them...

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Last Friday, with staff from the Clore Natural History Centre and aquarium, I took part in my first Mersey Ferry Discovery Cruise. It was with some trepidation of what to expect on the high seas of the Mersey that I ventured out. The day started over at Seacombe with us getting the plankton nets out and throwing them over the side of the ferry (attached to a long line) to get samples of the water so that we could demonstrate why the estuary is such a haven for birds. These are very fine nets which we pull through the water to catch the microscopic animals (zooplankton) and plants (phytoplankton) that it contains. These tiny organisms are indicators of the health of the estuary. Plankton essentially is anything that cannot swim against the current.

As the ferry headed over to the pier head to pick up the next passengers we got the microscopes set up. We got out specimens from the  World Museum's collection of marine life that had been washed ashore along the shore of the Mersey. These included dolphin and porpoise skulls, a bone from a whale, seaweed, shells and lots more.  The deck also had colourful displays from the RSPB and the Environment Agency. The water samples we’d collected earlier were a great hit, they where teeming with life all brought to light by the video link on the microscope to a computer-screen. The water was full with lots of beautiful plankton - diatoms floating in chains past our eyes with the sudden excitement of barnacle naupli and copepods dashing past the screen followed by the gentle pulsating of sea-gooseberries gliding past.  

In our spare moments we saw a whole array of birds from a peregrine falcon to arctic skua and a whole variety of gulls. There was also a running commentary by the RSBC spotter on what to look out for and in which direction. We even saw a cheeky seal having a nap on a sandbank. The view from the ferry gave you a really unique view of the shoreline along the Mersey out to Formby. It was a great day out for all the family young and old.

The next cruise takes place on Tuesday 18 August 2009 and looks to be another action packed day.

The cruise will pick up passengers from; Seacombe at 11am, Pier Head (Liverpool) at 11.10am and Woodside at 11.20am. The trip will last about three hours. Tickets cost £10 for adults, £5 for children.

For more details, or to book, contact Mersey Ferries on 0151 330 1444 or visit their website.

This week sees our final monthly draw to win pairs of tickets to your local ODEON cinema. All you have to do to enter is sign up for our e-newsletter. Everyone who signs up during the entry period is also entered into a draw to win Night at the Museum goodies including a telescope.

July is the last month to enter so be sure to sign up by this Friday. You can sign up on the registration page or learn more about the draw on our main site.

Thanks to ODEON Cinemas who have provided the tickets and goodies for this draw.

Here's a special report from Isobel, who spent last week helping out behind the scenes at World Museum Liverpool for her work experience placement.

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"When asked to choose a work experience placement, the traditional primary school or office jobs didn't really appeal to me. So instead I decided to work in the World Museum. My mum works there, but I didn’t really have a clue what she actually does. Maybe the readers of this are more knowledgeable than I am, but 'curator of numismatics' doesn't mean much to me! I wanted to find out what museum work entails, as I, like a lot of people, didn't really know what goes on behind that 'no entry' door.

My first day was with Emma, head of Ethnology, in the museum stores. Along with Chrissy, I helped measure, handle and photograph Buddha figurines. I learnt so much about different types of Buddhas and symbolism in Buddhist figurines and felt so lucky to pick up and hold things that are usually behind a glass case! It was so amazing to think about the culture and history surrounding each Buddha.

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to be shown the zoology stores by Tony, including vast cabinets of insects, spirit stores full of interesting samples, and stuffed animals from old displays.  I was at the National Conservation Centre on Tuesday as well, watching an interactive activity for the Weston Discovery Centre being made. In the afternoon I was with my mum looking at a new acquisition, a set of bravery medals being awarded to a seaman who gave himself up to the Japanese during World War II to save his ship. The human story behind those medals was really interesting, and more valuable to me than the solid gold coin I had been handling minutes before!

Wednesday was back at the museum stores, putting together Egyptian pots. This is a challenge, but very rewarding when you find two pieces that fit together. I can describe it as the most difficult and oldest jigsaw I have ever attempted! I also held a pot that was seven thousand years old and still had the potter's fingerprints on it. Among the Egyptian stores I also saw a mummified cat's head, which looked disturbingly like my pet, Boots.

My favourite day had to be Thursday, spent at the Clore Natural History Centre. I'm interested in Biology and it was great to spark the kids' interests in something and see how excited they got. Additionally I had spent all my other days behind the scenes, so it was a nice change to be front of house. Although I didn't have the knowledge to answer all of the children's questions, I learnt through listening to the demonstrator's answers, and, like what I've been told by many staff at World Museum Liverpool, working here means you are constantly learning!

Finally, my last day, Friday, was spent in the museum stores working with Roman coins. I've learnt so much this week, and the variety of the work I've done has been wonderful. I enjoyed my time there so much I am considering doing some volunteer work at the museum!"

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If, like Isobel, you are interested in a career in the museums and would like to volunteer to get more experience you can find out more on the Volunteering pages on our website.

Bug House Demonstrator, Rebekah Beresford, tells us about the latest addition to the Bug House...

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Well, this is my first post to the blog and through my future blog posts I hope to highlight some of the exciting things we do in the Bug House. My name is Rebekah, although I seem to have adopted the title ‘Beckie Bughouse’ somehow, and I’m the Bug House Demonstrator. I’ve been working for National Museums Liverpool for almost a year now and basically I love and wholly respect invertebrates of every kind.

So, may I present to you the Wandering Violin Mantis or Gongylus gonglodes. This awesome looking insect is our newest addition to the Bug House. We have eight of these funky little creatures and they’re one of the most bizarre looking out of all the mantids.

These insects are part of the order Mantodea and are characterized by their slender limbs and stocky upper body. As suggested by the name, this mantis looks somewhat like a violin with leaf like appendages protruding from the legs to aid camouflage and a leaf like head. They’re from Southern India and Sri Lanka and come in a variety of different shades of brown.

The wandering violin mantis is more of a ‘sit and wait’ species rather than a hunter but that’s not to say that they’re picky. These mantids are confident, ravenous feeders and will snatch a variety of flies and moths from the air, if the dare to fly close enough. Most mantids are solitary and have to be kept individually but these are unusually social. Given plenty of space they can be housed together in small groups of 8-10 and pose no threat to each other. 

So, keep your eyes peeled for them in the Bug House! I’ll be putting them out on display in the next few weeks in a mixed exhibit with the hermit crabs and fresh water shrimps. Also keep an eye on the blog for my next posts on how I set up their new vivarium.

I have always been interested in the Anglo Saxons who dominated England before the coming of the Normans and it’s astonishing how long they ruled. The great Anglo Saxon historian Bede said that his people were descended from three Germanic tribes – the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.They migrated from northern Germany and Scandinavia from the 5th century onwards, seeking better lives in the fertile lands of England. They subdued the native people, the Celts.

At one time it was thought that the Celts literally fled to the hills and moors to form distinct Welsh, Scottish and Cornish peoples. However, most historians now agree that the native Celts were assimilated into the new Anglo Saxon kingdoms from 400 onwards. These lasted around 600 years until William of Normandy invaded England and defeated the last Anglo Saxon king, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

This Sunday 19 July 2009 from 11am to 4pm visitors have a chance to meet the nearest you will get to a real Anglo Saxon, at an exciting free event called 'Clues from the Grave' at World Museum Liverpool. Part of the Festival of British Archaeology, it features a group of Anglo-Saxons carrying out a burial in the museum’s Weston Discovery Centre.

You can find out what the clues in the grave tell us about the lives of people who lived in England more than 1,000 years ago. Visitors can also discover how these ancient peoples used leeches, what they ate, their clothes, weapons and much more.

I met two of the Anglo Saxon enthusiasts when we did a media photo opportunity to promote the event. Linda and Sonnie Raee, of Wallasey, are pictured at the museum entrance. They are wearing authentic Anglo-Saxon style clothes and carrying weapons essential in those far-off days. Sonnie says: “Clues from the Grave gives an insight into the world of the Anglo Saxons. Visitors get a sense of what it was like to live in a very different England.”

My ancestors probably came over with William the Conqueror and I wonder what they made of their new home – the most beautiful islands on earth. I love the names of those long-gone Anglo Saxon kings – Egbert, Aethelwulf, Ethelred (the Unready) and Eadwig along with the more familiar Alfred, Edward, Edmund and Harold. It is a joy to occasionally come across people with ancient names in our own time.

Planetarium Operator, John Moran, gives us his thoughts on one of the most important anniversaries of the year...

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On 20 July 2009 we will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of arguably the most momentous occasion in history, the moon landing by the crew of Apollo 11.

We are marking this occasion at World Museum Liverpool with the launch (no pun intended) of a brand new show in the Planetarium about the moon called 'Magnificent Desolation'. The title of this new show was taken from the words of Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, one of the Apollo 11 astronauts, as he set foot on the moon after Neil Armstrong. When he surveyed the landscape he described it as "magnificent desolation".

The rocket they used to push them to the moon is still the most powerful rocket ever created. It was the 363ft, three stage, Saturn V, 95% of which was filled with fuel and would be jettisoned once the fuel had burned up. It was also the most advanced machine of its time.  

When I think about what it must have been like for these men I can't help but wonder where they got their courage from. They were sitting atop the biggest firework of all time travelling at a speed of 25,000 mph and although men had been into space quite a few times at that point, the testing of rockets had been rushed to say the least. We can assume that because it was a 'bragging rights' competition between America and Russia that was fuelling (again no pun intended) this space race, there must have been a lot of corners cut just to get it ready. Also this mission was going a lot further than most; 238,857 miles to be exact, so these guys were going to be spending about three days just getting to the moon. That is a long time to spend twiddling your thumbs and imagining what could go wrong. 

Once the command module reached lunar orbit (piloted by the often forgotten Michael Collins) Armstrong and Aldrin would then make their way down in the lunar module called Eagle. This was probably the most unlikely looking flying machine of all time. It was so flimsy that it couldn't be flown anywhere else but in the vacuum of space because a fierce wind on Earth would have probably blown it apart; however, weather is not an issue in space. In fact, whilst practicing flying a machine similar to the lunar module here on Earth, Neil Armstrong came close to losing his life when he lost control and had to eject. Because there is only one sixth of Earth's gravity trying to pull you down on the moon, the lunar module would be much easier to control and manoeuvre. 

Mission control had picked out what they thought to be the perfect landing spot in the Sea of Tranquillity. However, when Armstrong and Aldrin headed for this spot they realized that it was nothing more than a huge crater filled with rocks and boulders. This is where Armstrong’s cool, unflappable mind came into its own. He had to fly around and find a suitable landing site or the whole mission would be a failure. So with the fuel gauge reading only twelve seconds of fuel left, alarms going off on the instrument panel and mission control telling him to abort, the message the world had been holding its breath for came back: "Houston, Tranquillity base here, the Eagle has landed".  

Later, leaving behind their back-packs, tools, boots and other needless weight - so they could bring back some moon rock - they successfully blasted off and met up with the waiting command module. After safely making their way back through the Earth's atmosphere and making a perfect slash-down in the ocean, the celebrations could begin.  

Imagine what the feeling must have been like for these guys knowing that you had just written your name into the history books for all time. I guess this is how they were able to overcome their fears; the national celebrations, the ticker-tape parades and the endless affection that was going to be felt by the whole world.

They truly must have felt over the moon (and that pun was definitely intended!)

Across the National Museums Liverpool website, we have loads of great games, e-cards, online-only exhibitions, videos, interactives and podcasts for you to enjoy. And we've just launched our new VIP Zone as a hub for all these cool features that really bring our collections and exhibitions to life.

You can watch a video of a Pharaoh talking about life in ancient Egypt or download a talk by curator Pauline Rushton and photographer Francesco Mellina about our Sound and Vision exhibition - photographs of Liverpool music and fashion from 1978-82.

This multi-media stuff gives people from around the world the chance to get a better experience of what we have in our venues, even if they can't come along in real life.

You can also find all our social networking sites in the VIP Zone. So if you want to follow the new Museum of Liverpool on Twitter or join the Walker Facebook group then you can find links to our social sites there too.

Here's one of the latest videos we've put online featuring George Holt, the former owner of Sudley House, in the dining room. He talks about dinner parties, his plans for improving the city of Liverpool and describes some of the paintings in the room.

If you’re heading into town for Beatles Day on 10th July stop off at The Beat Goes On to see its fantastic array of Beatles memorabilia - but don’t neglect the Walker Art Gallery. The Walker may not stand out as major landmark on the Beatles trail but it is actually a rather interesting (and not insignificant) footnote in the Beatles' story.

When Paul McCartney’s exhibition of paintings at the Walker was planned, he recalled how he and John would spend 'many a pleasant afternoon’ in the gallery. It’s difficult to get your head round - the young two mates swaggering through the galleries, fooling about, mulling over the paintings. Boy, would I have loved to have been a fly on the wall, listening to what they said about the pictures - I have a suspicion they may have had a few things to say about the nudes, for one!

In fairness to John it makes perfect sense that they spent time in the Walker. Art was a recurring theme that ran throughout his life and here was this highly-acclaimed gallery right on the doorstep. John was at art school after all and he had a talent for sketching that he later shared in his books, 'In His Own Write' and 'A Spaniard In the Works'.

Another major artistic link in the chain was of course Stuart Sutcliffe. Stuart was John’s best friend and they were at college together. Such was Stu’s talent that he exhibited a painting at the Walker in 1959 and artworks by Stu remain in the gallery's collection. The way history tells it, Stu used the money from the sale of his painting to buy a guitar. When he set off to Hamburg with the band he met photographer Astrid Kirchherr and her boyfriend Klauss Voorman. The couple had a big influence on the style of the boys giving them their trademark ‘mop tops’ (and coincidentally Klauss went on to design the Revolver album cover). Stu and Astrid became an item and the young artist swiftly returned to his true calling of painting. Sadly he died prematurely of a brain haemorrhage before he could fulfil his potenital. He is buried locally in Huyton.

Despite Stu’s passing, art continued to play a decisive role in John Lennon’s life. It was in an art gallery (the Indica) that John met Yoko Ono, herself a credible and well-established avant-garde artist. It’s clear that Yoko stimulated John creatively and intellectually. John had loved and admired Stu but he may well have felt inadequate in his shadow. Yoko on other hand  gave him the confidence to take himself seriously in artistic terms and validated his ideas outside the field of music. I sometimes wonder if it the loss of Stu that later propelled John into such an all-consuming and intense relationship with an artist. All I can say for sure is that art had a pivotal role to play in the lives of John, Stu and even Paul – and I’d like to think that the Walker played some small part in that.

Note: You can see the pictured Beatle suit as well as other garments and memorabilia in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum until 1 November 2009.The photograph shows the suit in the Walker's Craft & Design gallery in a previous display.  

The 15 - 21 June 2009 was Refugee Week, a national event which encourages people to celebrate the positive contributions that refugees and asylum seekers make to the UK. Ann-marie McGoughey, our project worker for engaging refugees and asylum seekers, tells us how it went:

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This year, the Simple Acts campaign was launched to inspire people to use small, everyday actions to help change the perceptions of refugees and asylum seekers. Refugee Week organisers have developed a list of 20 simple actions, that anyone can do, such as 'smile', 'cook a dish from another country' or 'learn to say a few things in another language'. The full list can be seen on the Simple Acts website.

Here at National Museums Liverpool, we supported Refugee Week and the Simple Acts campaign, by delivering a series of events for staff and visitors. Events included a drawing workshop with artist Charlotte Brown, linked to the 20 Simple Acts. Participants chose their favourite act and drew a picture to represent it. Charlotte then joined all of the pictures together to create a Simple Acts banner, which measured over 9 metres in length! Staff also had the opportunity to contribute to this enormous piece of artwork during a lunchtime event at World Museum Liverpool.

We also had a number of events in the museum’s Treasure House Theatre, including African Beats workshops with Chaba. During these workshops, visitors learnt how to drum, sing and also tried African travelling dance. Also in the theatre during the week, we showed two films created by groups of young refugees and asylum seekers: Visitor & Samurai and Make Your Own Liverpool.

The week ended with a celebration event involving groups of primary school children and students from EMTAS (Ethnic Minority & Traveller Achievement Service). The pupils had been working with EMTAS in the run-up to Refugee Week and treated us all to a show of performances, films and artwork that they had created. The grand finale included a balloon release outside of World Museum Liverpool, during which the children released their positive messages for refugees and asylum seekers.

All in all, a very enjoyable week, with over 560 simple acts completed by National Museums Liverpool staff and visitors! I can't wait for next year!

The Beat Goes On at World Museum, celebrates a wealth of Liverpool music across the ages right from the 40s until today, and not one decade has gone by when a Liverpool act hasn’t topped the charts.

One thing’s for sure, the exhibition is packed with fascinating objects and memorabilia charting the city’s musical heritage to date, but talent is still emerging daily and tomorrow’s stars could one day find themselves becoming part of Liverpool’s history, adorning i-pod screens and the walls of new Museum of Liverpool alike.

Yes, there is the idea that you have to be in the right place at the right time, but sheer hard work and determination is often necessary for a band or artist to gain access to the ‘right place’ at the ‘right time’, and our city offers some great opportunities to get noticed by the decision makers in the business.

As the Guinness Book of Record’s ‘City of Pop’, Liverpool avidly supports its emerging talent to climb the ladder of musical success, and those on the city’s youth music scene will be pleased to hear that the annual Streetwaves competition - doing just that - is back again for 2009.

This year, the competition is offering two lucky acts the chance to play a 25 minute outdoor set at the legendary Mathew Street Festival! Acts aged 14 – 25 can apply to audition by Tuesday 14 July, so be quick and visit www.liverpool.gov.uk/culture for an application form...and good luck!

Following up on our own competition, we’re also pleased to see that some of the artists voted for on The Beat Goes On’s Myspace are coming on in leaps and bounds since they’ve been featured on the digital jukeboxes in the exhibition:

A firm favourite in the votes, Dave Tyrell is releasing his debut album on 1 August, and band Jessica’s Ghost has also released an album, The Winning Hand with various gig dates in the coming months including Heebie Jeebies and the Mathew Street Finge. GK & The Renegades have sadly gone their separate ways, although GK (Gavin Kaufman) has announced he will be launching solo projects, so we look forward to hearing more from him.

I went to see a small but fascinating display of prints by Kenyan artist Peterson Kamwathi at World Museum Liverpool today.

The prints contain symbols and imagery that explore Kenya’s political situation. Each image contains a bull which represents the Kenyan nation in the midst of unrest.

Kamwathi says about his work: "I view myself as a part of my society and as such I’m accountable to the society. Being an artist, this society extends beyond my immediate environment to include the world. In my work I strive to address and document issues that affect and impact my country, my continent and now the planet."

The display officially opens tomorrow (26 June) when there will also be a presentation in the Treasure House Theatre on Peterson’s work and Kenya’s contemporary art scene by artist and collector Ed Cross at 3pm.

Congratulations to Qianer Sha, our latest volunteer to receive her v50 award for completing 50 hours. Qianer has volunteered regularly since November 2008, starting in Big Art for Little Artists at the Walker before helping out in The Beat Goes On exhibition. Qianer told us:
 
"It is a great experience for me to be able to volunteer in The Beats Goes On exhibition. It is a good opportunity for me to learn a lot of things about the city and its music and discover a lot which I took for granted before. Also, it is not only a chance to learn communication skills but also have so much fun."

Have a look at our website for further information about youth volunteering with v-involved at National Museums Liverpool.
 

Yesterday I saw the installation of a new display of Islamic ceramics in the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum Liverpool. The display is a very personal project for technical services technician Helen Halliwell, as she has been closely involved from the outset.

Helen used to work as a demonstrator in the Weston Discovery Centre before joining the technical services team over at the National Conservation Centre recently. When the display of Islamic ceramics was proposed to tie in with the Arabic Arts Festival next month, Helen’s expertise was called on as she has a background in ceramics - she worked as a ceramics technician while studying for her Masters degree in the subject. So Helen worked with curator Emma Martin to select pieces of 13th and 14th century Islamic pottery from Iran, Iraq and Egypt for the display. The pieces, which have never been on display before, were chosen as they are great examples of the geometry and patterns in their designs, which Islamic ceramics are famous for.

After finalising the selection Helen joined technical services, which is the department responsible for creating mounts and installing displays. So she has been involved in that side of the project as well, including specifying the layout of the display case.

I caught up with Helen and senior technician Bill Sillitoe when they finished the display off yesterday. Bill made the supports for the wall mounted sherds in the display, using wire with a silicon tubing covering to protect the artefacts. Although they look quite simple, each one is specially made to support a specific sherd safely at the correct angle.

You can see more photos of the installation in our Islamic ceramics display set on Flickr.

It's National Volunteers Week, so our youth volunteer co-ordinator Claire Olson has asked me to thank all our wonderful volunteers for their continuing hard work and enthusiasm, not just this week but throughout the year.

If you would like more information about volunteering then have a look at our volunteering web pages or pop into one of our special Volunteers Week events. Drop in any time from 11am-3pm at World Museum on Tuesday and the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Thursday.

We asked Dashti, one of our youth volunteers, about his experiences as a volunteer and here's what he said:

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"Hi my name is Dashti and I’m 17. I have volunteered at National Museums Liverpool for 11 months. I started working in The Beat Goes On exhibition from July to September 2008. I worked in this exhibition talking to visitors, tidying up the play area and replacing comments cards.

After this, I began working with the Community Partnerships team. Every Wednesday I work with students from EMTAS (Ethnic Minority & Traveller Achievement Service). We have done many projects together including a project about the the Museum of Liverpool, learning about the history of Liverpool and making a film called 'Make Your Own Liverpool'. I also helped the students learn about ancient Egypt, space and national history.

I got my v50 award certificate in December, but I have now done 100 hours! I have learnt how to communicate well with lots of different people. I have learnt many things about the history of Liverpool and I also learnt about the exhibitions in the museum.

I have enjoyed talking to interesting people. The staff have been very helpful and because I feel more comfortable in the museum I will continue volunteering!"

One of the real privileges of my job is being able to see some of the behind the scenes work that goes into the creation of museum displays, the sort of things that most people take for granted. For example, not many people know that every single display stand supporting artefacts in our venues has been individually made by the highly skilled people in the technical services department, based in the National Conservation Centre. They don't just buy shelves and supports from the DIY stores, they hand craft every single display stand to suit the specific needs of the object it will be supporting.

The newest member of the team, Helen Halliwell, got to see her first major project go on display today. Helen worked with senior technician Bill Sillitoe to make a display stand for the World Cultures gallery at World Museum Liverpool to show contemporary netsuke figures. The smart circular stand has brushed Perspex shelves on both side to display the tiny figures from the Jonas Goro Gadelius collection, which was kindly donated to the museum by his widow Gabita. The really clever part is that it has a removable coloured disk in the middle, so when the display is refreshed each year to show different netsuke figures, it will be easy to change from its current red to a different colour that will suit the new figures.

You can see more photos of the installation in our netsuke display set on Flickr

Those nice people at ODEON Cinemas have given us some even nicer prizes to help mark the opening of the second Night At The Museum movie - Battle of the Smithsonian. We've got tickets to your local cinema, a telescope, night vision glasses, a torch and lots of other goodies to give away.

To be in with a chance of winning these all you have to do is sign up for our email updates here. For the next few months we'll be having monthly draws for free tickets, and at the end of the promotion one name will be drawn to receive the telescope and other bits. The first draw takes place this coming Monday.

There's more information, including terms and conditions, on our main site.

The Liverpool Daily Post launched a survey yesterday asking people to vote on which Liverpool personalities should be included in the Liverpool Map.

Readers have already been involved by submitting their opinions on which places should be included in the map, and the public have recently provided examples of their handwriting for inclusion in a community layer of the map.

People now have until Sunday 31 May to visit the Daily Post website to take part in the survey to find out which people they feel best represent the city in fields including the arts, music and sport.

These names will then form the final layer of the Liverpool Map, which will stand in the People's City gallery of the new Museum of Liverpool when it opens in 2010.

For inspiration, why not visit The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool to find out more about the musical acts that have made an impact on Liverpool's history.

Click here to find out more about the Liverpool Map and its unique structure and creation.

Yesterday I was able to witness a ceremony to mark the returning of Australian indigenous human remains that had been in our collections since 1948. The remains are being returned as they have strong cultural, spiritual and religious significance to Australian indigenous communities. You can see more photos of the ceremony on our Returning to Australia Flickr set.

Representatives from The Ngarrindjeri (meaning The People) had come over from Australia to perform the ceremony. Seeing them with their fantastically painted faces was a pretty amazing experience in itself. Their presence definitely caused a stir outside the World Museum, with a large crowd gathering to see what was happening! The ceremony began with Mr Major Sumner burning eucalyptus branches, which he carried around the crowd and fanned with a large feather. He then raised three boomarangs into the air and touched them to the ground while speaking in his native dialect. Using the boomerangs he also performed a dance involving hitting them together while singing.

Mr Sumner also spoke to the crowd, saying that he was thinking of his ancestors and that we should also think about ours, whose "spirits are in this land". He also said how it was fitting that he was taking the remains from this "land by the water" to his land, which was also by the water. The Ngarrindjeri is a group of 18 clans or lakinyeri who speak similar dialects and have family connections around the lower Murray River, western Fleurieu Peninsula and Coorong, South Australia.

This is the first of the remains of three individuals being returned to Australia. The remains will be kept in a keeping place at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra and will be given the culturally-appropriate care needed. Eventually they may be buried if returned to their original communities.

Swishing and searching for cool vintage clothes is very popular right now, but who would have thought that celebrated poet Roger McGough would be into recycling clothes!

Last week Roger, who is himself part of Liverpool’s musical heritage, lent the World Museum a unique item to adorn the walls of our massive music exhibition, The Beat Goes On. This unusual item is in fact a pair of trousers; but not just any trousers! They once belonged to Roger’s fellow Scaffold member Mike McCartney’s brother Paul, a member of another little-known band from Liverpool; The Beatles. (You may have heard of them, they were around a bit in the 60s.)

Roger told us how he came to be the proud owner of the trousers:

“I was friends with Mike McCartney at a time when I began teaching in local schools. It was obvious that I needed to smarten up and make an effort at work in order to set an example to the pupils, and Mike suggested I have some of his brother’s cast offs."

"I’m pleased they are going to be displayed somewhere for all to enjoy and The Beat Goes On is the perfect setting. It’s strange to think that when I used to wear them, the thought never crossed my mind that my mate’s brother’s trousers would one day be hung on the wall of a museum!”

They were also the inspiration behind a poem entitled 'To Macca’s Trousers', which is also on display alongside the trousers. The poem describes how Roger went from wearing the trousers on nights out in the 60s, to finding them packed up in a suitcase of old clothes in his attic years later. Here's the first verse for you:

You were part of a suit that Paul handed down to his brother.
High-buttoned Italian style, circa ‘Please Please Me’
The jacket fitted but you were too short in the leg
so Michael passed you on to me.
On Saturday night we went to the disco
and although we looked cool on the dance-floor
it didn’t seem right. Greater things you were meant for.
So I hung you in the wardrobe and awaited the call
‘Hello mate, can I have me trousers back? It’s Paul’

'To Macca’s Trousers' is also part of a new collection of Roger’s poetry being published this June by Penguin Books, entitled 'That Awkward Age'. The collection is a powerful testament to the miraculous in the everyday, describing one-off chance encounters, embarrassing questions and small wonders, as Roger resolves – and fails – to live every day as if it were his last. 

We hope Paul won't be asking for the trousers back too soon!

Update 15/5/2009: Please note that this object will temporarily be removed from display from 22 May until early June.

This week I got to look around the entomology lab at World Museum Liverpool, at one of the creepy crawly tours that are available to visitors during school holidays. Zoology curator, Guy Knight, took us around the lab so we could see some of the thousands of mounted specimens housed in the back of the museum.

He showed us a case full of crickets that were found in Liverpool after they hitch-hiked here on some bananas. Then there were questions from some of the eager smaller visitors on the tour – my favourite being; ‘What happens if they come back to life after you’ve killed them?’ Maybe they had been to the Ancient Egypt gallery beforehand and had learned about the afterlife! Bees were next on the agenda – we have around 10,000 bees in our collections apparently. We learned that there are 250 different kinds of bees, but wild bumblebees are getting rarer due to the countryside changing and there being less wild areas for bees to live in.

In other bug news, you can now come and see a new ‘living display’ in the bug house gallery featuring the Indian Ground Beetle (Anthia sexguttata). The beetles’ new home has been created using a special sand and cement mix, which will allow them to dig burrows to lay their eggs.  Indian Ground Beetles are a large predatory beetle, which actively hunt down their insect prey and this species has never been bred in captivity. They can also spray an acidic liquid accurately into the eyes of their enemies if they feel threatened. Unbee-lievable!

In these grim economic times and rainy days, we could do worse than remind ourselves that there is usually a light at the end of the tunnel! Forty years ago this week, John Lennon and Yoko Ono set about bringing a message of peace to the world from their bed in the Amsterdam Hilton hotel. They vowed to stay in bed for a whole week (24 - 31 March, 1969) in what they called a "bed-in for peace". It certainly drew alot of media attention to their message of peace and in particular their stance against the war in Vietnam, which can only be a good thing.  While this might not be everyone's idea of a great honeymoon, I can't think of a better place to stage a peace protest than a nice comfy bed. I took part in an anti-war demo in Manchester once and by heck it was freezing!

This wasn't their last bed-in though. A few months later on 26 May 1969, John and Yoko checked into Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel to start their next peace protest, to continue the momentum of the first one. For another week the couple, along with Ono's five-year-old daughter Kyoko, entertained guests including U.S. black civil rights advocate Dick Gregory, Quebec separatist Jacques Larue-Langlois and American cartoonist Al Capp. It was at the end of this bed-in that a historic and spontaneous performance of 'Give Peace a Chance' was recorded.

Here at the museums, we're very proud to hold a piece of this moment in history. In our collections we have an 'All You Need is Love' beadspread that was handmade by the local Montreal Hare Krishna Chapter and given to John and Yoko for the protest. 

Currently you can see the bedspread from the Montreal bed-in for peace in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Peace out.

 

It's Science Week so, as you'd expect, the folk in World Museum have had lots of free activities for budding scientists. Here's a pic of visitors making and painting plaster casts of fossils in the Clore Natural History Centre last weekend. If you missed that then don't worry, you can have a go this weekend.

There will also be a range of quizzes and colouring sheets and the chance to meet our resident dinosaur expert Dave Roberts who will be bringing out some specimens, including dinosaur poo. Full details are on the World Museum Liverpool events and activities page.

Introducing Ed Casson, a new addition to the press team at NML:

When strolling around Liverpool I have always been told to look up to see the city's stunning architecture and history - now I'll find it hard to resist looking down. Last week I spent the afternoon on a guided 'fossil walk' with Tony Morgan, a geologist in the Clore Natural History Centre at World Museum Liverpool.

Starting at the top of William Brown Street, Tony pointed out a marking on the pavement (to the untrained eye a mere groove) which was in fact a 320-year-old fossilised fallen tree. Across St John's Gardens were distinct clam markings from the Jurassic Era - 150-million-years-old - on the William Rathbone statue.

Possibly Liverpool's oldest rock (although there are older examples in the World Museum's Clore Department) stands at an astonishing 1.5-billion-years-old. The Rapakivi Granite, from Finland, was used to build the former Allied Irish Bank in Dale Street. On to the Abbey National and jewellers Boodles in North John Street, and snail fossils can be found in the limestone.

Even stranger, as passers-by who watched as we studied the building will testify, are the fossils on the Met Quarter shopping centre in Whitechapel. The Bavarian granite contains large fossilised molluscs and cuttlefish-related creatures (again from the Jurassic Era), more examples of which can be seen at the World Museum. Tony, a member of the Liverpool Geological Society, explained that the molluscs could have grown to as large as two metres in diameter.

He said: "There are an amazing amount of fossils in the buildings across Liverpool, you just have to know what you're looking for and keep an eye out for them."

So then fossil-hunters, as they say at the bingo - "Eyes down!"

* An in-depth feature on the fossil walk, by journalist Emma Pinch, appeared in Tuesday’s Daily Post.

The temptation to go overboard with footballing puns is almost overwhelming but I'll give it a go.

Only A Game?, the UEFA football exhibition currently at World Museum Liverpool, features lots of loaned objects including trophies, medals, shirts and football memorabilia. Over the coming weeks there are going to be more substitutions than you get in your average international friendly (well, not quite), with items going in and out of the exhibition. They are:

• Everton Collection objects, including the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup medal but excluding the Barcelona Cup - last chance to see these is 8 March 
• UEFA Cup - last day to see this is 3 March
• The following all arrive on 4 March -
  • UEFA Competition for National Representative Women’s Teams trophy (1982/84 - 1987/89)
  • UEFA European Women’s Championship trophy (1989/91- 1999/2001)
  • UEFA European Women’s Championship trophy (new trophy used from 2003/05 onwards)
  • UEFA European Under-21 Championship trophy and winners' medals

There may be other changes so if you are coming to see a specific object you might want to phone the museum or check the Only A Game? webpages to make sure it is available. Either way there is lots to see during any visit.

Calling all part time art and craft students - how would you like to have your artwork displayed in our venues during Adult Learner's Week in May 2009? You could if you win the 'Inspired by...' competition.

Entrants in this year's competition must submit a piece of artwork inspired by the collections, exhibitions or displays in either Sudley House, World Museum Liverpool or the National Conservation Centre. You may submit any art, craft, multi-media, digital work, video or animation. Participants must be over 18 and studying arts or crafts part time. Full entry criteria and downloadable application forms are on the Inspired by... web page.

We've just published a cute little pocket guide to many of the fab happenings at NML in 2008. It's good to revisit highlights like Ben Johnson's residency, the Superlambananas, the opening of Seized! and exhibitions like Art In The Age of Steam and The Beat Goes On.

You can download your copy of The Little Book of Big Highlights here (pdf 6mb).

We billed The Beat Goes on exhibition ‘from The Beatles to the Zutons’, but has anyone heard of 'from The Hollies to the Happy Mondays'? That’s what you’ll find if you take a trip to the other end of the East Lancs Road, to Salford Museum & Art Gallery. They’re currently showing Quiffs, Riffs and Tiffs – a small but perfectly formed exhibition about the music scene in Salford.

I spent a happy hour there a few weeks ago and thought there were a few gems to be seen. Top of the list for me were notes by Morrissey and Johnny Marr – with Salford Lads Club getting its rightful mention. There’s also handwritten lyrics to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Teach Your Children, signed by one of my all time idols,  Graham Nash. There are some childhood pictures of Graham at his home in Salford, before his success with The Hollies and later with CS&N stole him from these shores.

Other items featured in the exhibition relate to Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Anthony Wilson including The Hacienda , The Ting Tings, and even The Salford Jets - former band of Rock Radio 106.1 DJ Mike Sweeney (yes, he's still going on radio, and very good he is too). 

On the other hand, if you are reading this from the outskirts of Manchester, hop on the train to World Museum Liverpool where you’ll find The Beat Goes On exhibition covering Liverpool’s finest music. Morrissey fans will be thrilled by the Billy Fury display. Old Hacienda heads will feel at home in the Cream and Quad sections, while first generation punks and indie kids will be bowled over by memories of  Eric's, The Las and other such legends. Oh, and then there’s that other band from Liverpool. You may well need more than one trip to take it all in.

Nope, not a band featuring in The Beat Goes On exhibition but a couple of World Museum Liverpool-related pieces on the Guardian site today.

There's a short video shot in Saqqara, south of Cairo, where archaeologists are excavating ancient Egyptian tombs and unearthing mummies. You can see the video here. 

Also, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The Guardian has created a multimedia guide that looks at the social and historical context of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection (I didn't know that Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln).

We've our own Darwin-related events organised to coincide with Darwin200 - a national programme of events celebrating Charles Darwin’s scientific ideas and their impact on our lives. More on them on our main site.

At the end of February, Earth will receive a visitor named Lulin. This is not an alien, but a comet that astronomers say may have never visited this corner of the solar system before and should be visible to the naked eye. Our resident expert in all things celestial, Planetarium Operator John Moran, is here to tell us how to spot it…

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If you were to scoop up a handful of snow, shape it into a rough spherical shape and add some dirt to it, you would basically be holding in your hand the ingredients that make up a comet. These mountain-sized dirty snowballs are some of the most intriguing objects there are in space. That's why during February and beyond, millions of eyes will be eagerly looking towards the constellation Leo to try and catch a glimpse of Comet Lulin.

From roughly the 16th of the month, not only will we be able to see Comet Lulin with the naked eye but also within two degrees of it you will find the ringed planet Saturn. This should be a beautiful sight through binoculars, all you need to do is find it. Look for the constellation Ursa Major, often called The Plough, which most people are familiar with, then find the two pointers which show us the way to the Pole star. If you follow the pointers in the opposite direction of Polaris and continue until you come to the first big constellation, this will be Leo, identified by the back-to-front question mark. Look down and slightly to the left for the brightest object in this constellation, which at the moment is Saturn, and just below this will be Comet Lulin. As the days pass so the comet will start moving upwards and to the right.
 
Comets originate in a vast region of space which borders our solar system called the Oort Cloud. As they swirl around, some smash into each other and like snooker balls on a table get fired off in a different direction and this starts their long cold journey into our solar system. As they near the sun the ice starts to melt and gas and vapour start streaming out through evaporation; this is how the tail forms, which clearly identifies a comet.

Most Comets that enter our solar system get caught by the gravitational pull of the sun and end up making the same journey back into space. Eventually they come back some time in the future, like the most famous of them all; Halley's Comet, which makes this journey every 76 years. But some comets just fly straight through our system and are never seen again. Comet Lulin looks like it may well be one of these comets.

So if we are fortunate to have clear skies at the end of February, try and catch a glimpse of one of mother nature’s most remarkable phenomena.

Did we get a visit from Darwin himself today? Our Treasure House Theatre Coordinator, Jo Connor, gave us all the details to clear up the mystery...

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You may have been forgiven for thinking you’d travelled back in time if you had been at the World Museum Liverpool atrium this morning, as you would have bumped into Mr Charles Darwin, aka Treasure House Theatre Demonstrator Paul Netterfield.

Paul was in role as the great naturalist complete with costume and beard to highlight the museum’s upcoming events to commemorate Darwin’s centenary year.

Our Mr Darwin greeted the press and visitors as they entered and pointed out his own specimen (now in our collections), an Oven Bird from the Straits of Magellan. The specimen is complete with hand written tags and is now in the Hidden Treasures Case in the museum’s atrium.

To celebrate all things Darwin this year, you will find discovery trails, performances, exhibits, poetry readings and further events at the museum. Visit our Darwin200 page for more information.

Volunteer Tom Hawley came along with me to a talk by our Antiquities Curator, Carolyn Routledge, and has written this blog to tell you all about it. You also can see the photos of Carolyn's trip to the 'Sacred City of Abydos' on Flickr, including her exciting journey into a tomb.

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The most recent talk by Dr. Carolyn Routledge at the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum Liverpool, was filled with tales of gore and splendour. The talk was accompanied by photographs of Dr. Routledge herself, exploring ancient tombs in the Egyptian desert.

During her time on the archaeological site in Upper Egypt, Dr. Routledge worked alongside different institutions, mainly from the United States. Dr. Routledge took us on a historical tour of some of the oldest tombs in Egypt, located in the ancient city of Abydos, about six miles west of the River Nile.

Many of the larger knives on display in the Ancient Egypt gallery and the World Museum, were thought to have been used for ritual killings. One of the bodies found in Abydos is believed to have been a male servant. It was the favourite servants who were ritually killed, buried alongside their pharaoh and taken with him to the afterlife. Some compliment indeed! The name found with this dead servant was ‘Nefer’, who also happened to be a dwarf. There is evidence to suggest that dwarves were very highly respected in ancient Egypt, holding important responsibilities. In fact, the name Nefer translates into English as beautiful, or good.

Another exhibit on display at the Ancient Egypt gallery is a red necklace, moulded from metal into the shape of an oyster shell. Dr. Routledge told us that the necklace could be made of electrum (a naturally occurring combination of gold and silver) that has corroded to a red colour, or it could be made of a gold alloy containing some copper, which is a rare ‘red gold’. They hope to find out in the future whether it is made from red gold, which would make this necklace a rare treasure!

It was interesting to discover the stories behind some of the museum’s exhibits. They’re not just beautiful, but they have remarkable tales attached to them. Make sure you check out World Museum Liverpool's events and activities page for future and upcoming events. And don’t forget… they’re all free!

Here's the latest picture from Superfiveadaybanana's travels to local schools. Today the handling and transport team shepherded the sculpture from Brae Street School to St Michael's School in Kensington.

This is the latest move in a busy month for the team, which has involved taking plant models from World Museum Liverpool to Wrexham Museum for an exhibition and returning the huge Peter Doig painting 'Blotter' to the Walker after it had been out on loan. Closer to home, the team have also transported some delicate pieces of sculpture from our stores to the National Conservation Centre for assessment and treatment, as well as helping to install the next big exhibition at the Walker, Fashion V Sport. You can see some of what they've been up to in the Moving Stories photographs on Flickr.

I know you will be truly excited about finding out the result of our poll to find out your favourite exhibition from our venues in 2008, so I will put you out of your misery. With an admirable 52.75% of all the votes, our monster music exhibition The Beat Goes On came out on top. But don't fret if you haven't been to this exhibition yet as it is staying at the World Museum until 1 November 2009. You can also check out our listings page to find out about any events going on that are related to this exhibition.

There was an interesting profile piece in the Sunday Mail this week about England manager Fabio Capello. Reading between the lines, you get the distinct impression that football and cultural pursuits are deemed mutually exclusive - that it is somehow surprising that a man into his football should also enjoy a bit of modern art. But then Fabio Capello is Italian, and an appreciation of the arts is central to his national identity, we surmise. 

This really got me thinking. It’s difficult to accept that football and art don’t mix when you are in a city where football is art.  In Liverpool we have put football at the centre of Capital of Culture year through UEFA’s Only A Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Football is one of the city’s key assets - part of the currency, the vocabulary, the mythology, the identity - full stop. To omit it would be a nonsense. Football can create as much passion and drama, and elicit the same heightened emotions as a great piece of theatre, an imposing painting or a rousing music recital.  It brings an aesthetic quality to the sports field that requires elegance, balance and poise – infact, as a rugby league fan, I have often joked that football has more in common with ballet than rugby. Isn’t that why it’s called ‘the beautiful game’? (The introduction video for Only A Game? is worth a look - it's fun and light-hearted look at football in a European cultural context).

Capello is reported to be a big fan of Scottish painter Peter Doig, who won the Walker Art Gallery’s John Moores Painting Prize in 1993 with Blotter. Blotter is currently featured in a major solo show in Frankfurt,  but you can still see Pelican (Stag) which was loaned by the artist in exchange. The current John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize ends this Sunday 4 January, so if you share Fabio’s passion for modern art, seize the moment. If on the other hand you prefer his penchant for football, then you've got until 1 March to see Only A Game? at World Museum Liverpool.

The relationship between sport and culture will be further scrutinised in a new exhibition, Fashion Vs Sport that opens 13 February at the Walker Art Gallery. It ends its run at the V&A this Sunday.

It's new year's eve tomorrow and we've got a host of new stars to look forward to in January 2009. No, I don't mean the start of Celebrity Big Brother, I'm talking about the night sky and its numerous stars to spot over the next few weeks. Although, reading the mythological stories behind the constellations, you could be forgiven for thinking that they had come out of a celebrity gossip mag - plenty of betrayals and lost love. The Brad/Angelina/Jennifer debacle is nothing compared to this lot!

Our Planetarium Co-ordinator and resident night sky expert, John Moran, has brought us January's Nightwatch report about Orion the Hunter and Perseus the great Greek hero...

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The true winter constellations are on show in January with the Hunter Orion dominating the mythological cast of characters. Orion was a boastful hunter who claimed he could hunt and kill any animal, but met his match with a lowly scorpion as he couldn’t penetrate its armour. Orion fled into the sea and as he was swimming away, Apollo tricked his sister Artemis, who was in love with Orion, into firing an arrow at the far away object swimming in the sea. The arrow hit its mark and when Artemis found out what she had done, she begged Zeus to place Orion among the stars for all eternity and placed the scorpion on the opposite side of the sky.

Another constellation on show this month is Perseus named after the handsome Greek hero who saved the life of Andromeda by defeating the evil sea monster Cetus. Perseus had just slain the Gorgon Medusa and was carrying her head back as a trophy, because even in death Medusa’s head was still capable of turning any creature that looked upon her into stone and this is how he defeated Cetus.

On the 4th of the month look out for the first meteor shower of 2009, the Quantadrids, which have a high rate of 60 meteors per hour. Look out also for the ringed planet Saturn, which you will find in the constellation Leo around 9pm onwards. Don’t forget that 2009 is the international year of astronomy, so there should be plenty of interesting things to do and see to keep your imagination fired over the coming year.   

Yes everyone, it's that time again! The end of the year and time to vote on which exhibition you think was the best from our venues in 2008. Cast your minds back to the dramatic shots of the city from 'Metropolis - capturing modern Liverpool', or maybe your favourite was the 'John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize' exhibition with it's cutting edge contemporary paintings? Here is a selection of some of our exhibitions from 2008 for you to vote on....

If you'd like to find out about our main exhibitions for 2009, then check out the listings page for more details.

If you want to hear an Egyptian Pharaoh telling you about his new fiancé or get the gossip about a runaway Egyptian servant, then check out these videos taken from the new Ancient Egypt gallery. They really bring to life some of the  types of people who would have lived and worked in Egypt at the time. Apparently, the runaway servant in question didn't want to clean his master's smelly clothes anymore, but I won't spoil the story for you!

For more videos including those of an Egyptian priest and a chantress, visit the main Egypt  videos page, where there are also links to transcripts of all the videos.

To view the video subtitles, please select the full-screen option, shown by the four arrows icon. A transcript of this video can be found here.

Now the Egyptian gallery is open I'll be spending more time in the stores working with the reserve collection. Students and academics from universities use the collection for teaching and research.

One group of students from the University of Liverpool came in this week to study objects from the extensive Roman sculpture collection. The students are reading for masters degrees in the School of Archaeology Classics and Egyptology, which the museum has had links with for over a century.

Apart from examining Roman sculptures they also came to see the replicas we have of Aegean objects. The actual objects are in museums in Greece. Replicas are a good way of becoming familiar with key historical objects that are in foreign museums and is much more instructive than viewing them as photographs in books or behind the glass of showcases. The collection was put together by Professor Bosanquet (1871 - 1935) who taught Greek archaeology at the University of Liverpool from 1906 to 1920 and was the first holder of the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology.

You can see more photos of the Bosanquet teaching collection on our Flickr pages.

Monday will be an exciting day on the National Museums Liverpool website with the launch of two competitions.

Five lucky sports fans and their friends could win the opportunity to do what many footballers can only dream of - that is lift the UEFA Champions League trophy, which is currently on display in the Only a Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Keep an eye on the exhibition website from 9am on Monday to find out how - but be quick as you'll only have until 12 noon on Wednesday 10 December to enter.

Monday also sees the return of the Name that Object competition, with a new clue unveiled every day next week. This month's prize is a mounted print of the popular 'Liverpool Cityscape' by Ben Johnson and a 2009 desktop calendar featuring a different detail from the painting each month.

As you will have seen from the many posts on this blog, the new Ancient Egypt gallery at the World Museum opened to the public today. Last night some visitors were invited along to the preview opening and were greeted by the Ya Raqs Dance Troupe, who performed traditional Egyptian dances in truly glamorous costumes. The red velvet number was a particular favourite of mine. 

I spoke to 'Aziza' who said she had been dancing for about three years. The dancers were from Chester and the Wirral - I had no idea that these were such exotic places!

The gallery itself has a good spooky atmosphere now that the lighting is low, in particular the 'Realm of Osiris', which has several mummies in it. I also had a go at one of the interactives and found out what my adopted Egyptian name ('Fire Spirit Goddess' in case you were wondering!) would be in hieroglypics. You can check out more photos from the opening event on our Egyptian gallery Flickr set.

Have I mentioned recently that the new Ancient Egypt gallery opens tomorrow at World Museum Liverpool? Only a few dozen times! There's a sneaky look at part of the new gallery, along with lots of other photos of the preparations over the last two years, on our Ancient Egypt gallery Flickr page.

If you come to see the new gallery over the next few days you may notice that Mandy the Superlambanana, who usually stands in the atrium at World Museum, isn't there. This is because we need lots of extra space over the opening weekend so we sent our best shepherds (also known as Richard Roberts and Andrew Mountfield from the handling and transport team) to herd her away to the safety of a side room. You can see them settling her into her temporary abode on our Moving stories Flickr page. Mandy will be back out on display from Monday.

Here's the latest photo from the installation of the new Ancient Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool. It shows one of the 14 coffins on display in the gallery being installed by the handling team.

This is the coffin of Padiamunnebnesuttawy, who worked in a temple as a ‘Wab-priest of Amun’. His coffin (dated from about 664-525 BC) is decorated with images of different gods and events from the Book of the Dead. At the centre of the coffin you can see an image of Anubis preparing the mummy for the Afterlife.

The new gallery was reviewed on the Night Waves programme on BBC Radio 3 yesterday by Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology Magazine. If you missed the programme it's available on the BBC website for one week in their How to make a good Egyptian gallery feature.

Many people will be going to the new Ancient Egypt gallery when it opens on Friday to see the incredible Egyptian artefacts from our collections, many of which haven't been on display for decades. But have you ever looked underneath and behind these priceless objects at the display stands and mounts that are supporting them? It may surprise you to know that these have all been specially custom made by the highly skilled technicians in our technical services studio at the National Conservation Centre.

I popped into the studio earlier this week to see Bill Sillitoe and David Whitty busy preparing the last few display stands for the Ancient Egypt gallery. They produce everything pretty much from scratch, cutting and bending sheets of Perspex to create stands and soldering together the wires to make supports for some of the objects. You can see more photos of them at work in our Making display mounts for the Ancient Egypt gallery Flickr page and I hope that you go to the gallery to admire their handiwork from Friday.

Sunday is a special day. Yes, I know it is the last day of November, and that many of us will be counting down to Christmas from Monday – but it is also the very last day of voting for the very last The Beat Goes On Top Ten.   

The digital jukebox is now full – packed to its limit with fantastic, home-grown tunes for your listening pleasure – and so we won’t be having any more Top Tens for the moment. But at least you can escape the Slade, Roy Wood and the like – not to mention the controversial X-Factor cover of Hallelujah that’s about to be inflicted on us - and come down to the museum for some proper music. Infact, I suggest you suspend all X-Factor related activities and vote for The Beat Goes On instead!

There’s just one more tune to be added. Who will it be? You decide:

 

Aeris Presley 

Emma Jane’s Monkey Mind 

Puzzle 

Little Miss Strange

Rude Ruby

15 Storeys

The Sums

BeakerFolk of The Bronze Age

Polaris

Great North Western Hoboes 

Hello there.

Well for those of you who are regular followers of my blog (surely double figures?) then you will know I have a penchant for the beautiful game. We were fortunate enough to be visited last week by the great French defender and World Cup winner Lilian Thuram who was in Liverpool as a patron of the Only a Game? exhibition at World Museum Liverpool.

Lilian is now retried from football but he is looking to start an origanisation which tackles issues such as racism and discrimination in Europe. As a result he wanted to come to the International Slavery Museum to look at some of exhibits which focus on this subject as well as talk about the possibility of some sort of collaboration. Lilian was particularly impressed with our Black Achievers Wall. A message he thinks is important to get across to children of African descent across Europe. 

Some of my colleagues had a good laugh at the attached picture. I have to admit myself it is not difficult to spot the famous footballer and the museum professional. Maybe if I had not smiled quite as much and looked all excited it would have been harder to choose! Sad as it might seem, after the tour and our official discussions, I could not resist asking him to come out of retirement to play a few games for my own team (Leeds United for those who don’t already know). He smiled and asked what league we were now in? He genuinely looked surprised when I told him it was the third tier of the English league. Well, if you don’t ask you don’t get as they say.

I also recently gave a talk to the Merseyside Archaeological Society one evening. I knew the organiser from my days as a PhD student at the University of Liverpool so it was good to catch up. It was held in the Friends Meeting House in Liverpool. This is particularly interesting because of the relationship between Quakers and the abolition movement. Now by no means were all Quakers always against slavery, many owned slaves themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries in particular. That said, when the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787 with William Wilberforce as its parliamentary spokesperson, several of the founding members were in fact Quakers.

I am also very excited at the prospect of flying to Atlanta, Georgia, later this week, to attend the launch of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at Emory University. I have been invited to be a panel member which will discuss some of the ways the database can be used. The database has information about almost 35,000 slave voyages and will be an essential tool for research in my opinion. Whilst there I hope to be able to visit a number of institutions and historic sites connected to Martin Luther King Jr, who was born in Atlanta. In particular the King Center and his birthplace.

I will update you on my return.
 
Bye for now.

It's Friday so the handling and transport team decided to go fishing. Not in the Mersey though, they fished through the museum stores to find this giant turtle which needed to be taken to the taxidermy department at the National Conservation Centre for restoration.

They finished the week, which has included transporting everything from a Superlambanana to some ancient Egyptian artefacts, by helping taxidermmist James Jackson to install some scenic material on the Chirotherium display at World Museum Liverpool. You can see some of the highlights of their week on our Moving stories Flickr photo page.

Anyone who has ever carefully wrapped their best china in newspaper before moving house will appreciate what a tricky challenge the handling and transport team faced this week. They had to collect this incredibly delicate 5000 year old Egyptian pot from North Devon and transport it to World Museum Liverpool - a distance of 267 miles.

The good news is that drivers Paul Kelly and Andrew Mountfield delivered it safely, so visitors will be able to see it on display when the new Ancient Egypt gallery opens on 5 December.  You can see their photos of the trip - including a shot of the stunning scenery they saw along the way - in our Egyptian gallery Flickr photo page.

Curators can find themselves doing all sorts of unusual things in the name of duty. However Tony Parker, assistant curator of zoology, never expected to be signing the transfer papers for Peter Beardsley.

The Peter Beardsley in question was not the famous footballer though but a mounted specimen of a duck. Peter the duck is thought to be a cross between a Pekin and an Aylesbury duck. He was once the beloved pet of local lady, and was named after Peter the footballer's spell at Everton. Unfortunately it was never discovered whether he would live up to his namesake's skills on the football pitch, as he was tackled and killed by a dog (presumably not an Everton supporter) when he was 8 months old.

Peter's owner had him mounted in a display case after his death 16 years ago. She recently donated him to World Museum Liverpool, as she wont be able to take him with her when she moves house. Although she'll miss him, she decided that he would be in good company with the other mounted bird specimens in the museum's collections. Peter is currently on the reserve bench in the museum's stores but is available for researchers and study groups.

I found myself, for a few fleeting seconds, feeling quite intellectual during my last trip to the cinema. This was quite an achievement considering I had gone to see a romantic comedy about a dentist called Bertram who gains the ability to communicate with ghosts after a near death experience during a colonoscopy. I know - but it was good!

I was watching Ricky Gervais' new film, 'Ghost Town', while munching on some Revels (by the way, I'm not loving the new 'mystery sweet', I won't spoil it for you by saying what it is, but I say bring back the coffee one). In the film, Gervais' love interest is an Egyptologist and they bond over a fascination with the dental hygiene of a mummy (of course!)

They were discussing the mummy's internal organs and it was at this point in the film that I threw down my Revels and sat up excitedly, prodding my friend, as I realised I knew an Egyptian fact! I had been reading about some of the collection items from our new Egypt gallery and so I was able to say; “Look, look, those are canopic jars!”

My bewildered companion nodded and was not as impressed as I'd hoped, but I was quite pleased with myself anyway. There on the screen were indeed some canopic jars, very similar to the ones that will be on display here. These jars were used to store a mummy's organs, before being placed inside a canopic chest and buried in the tomb with the mummy. So if you go to see the film, you too can try to impress your friends with this cool Egyptian factoid. Enjoy!

You can read more about the new Egypt gallery, opening on Friday 5 December 2008 at World Museum Liverpool, on our museum developments page.

Here's some great news from the v-involved youth volunteering project at National Museums Liverpool. Our first participant has been awarded the v50 Award certificate, after contributing 50 hours of her time as a volunteer. I'll let her tell you all about it:

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"Hello. My name is Christine, I’m 24 and I’ve been volunteering here at World Museum Liverpool since 5th June. I have recently achieved my 50 hour target for which I received a v50 Award certificate for my contribution to the museum.

I’ve been helping out on the information desk and making sure leaflets are available for everyone. I occasionally work in the learning office doing bits of admin.

I really enjoy working at the museum, particularly on the information desk as I like giving tickets out to the public.

I am proud that I am the first vinvolved youth volunteer to reach over 50 hours and I feel that it has been time well spent as I have gained more confidence and feel it’s a worthwhile experience to be a volunteer."

We are only weeks away from the opening of the newly refurbished Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool, on 5 December 2008. Conservators at the National Conservation Centre have been working hard for months to prepare the objects for display, such as this funerary shroud and - of course - some Egyptian mummies. Now that the artefacts are ready for installation the handling team have been carefully transporting them over to the museum.

Handling technician and senior driver Paul Kelly has sent this update and photo - and you can see more of his photos of the move, as well as others of the objects being prepared for display, on our Egyptian gallery Flickr page.

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"This week the handling team drivers Andrew Mountfield and myself have been involved in moving some seriously ancient and delicate Egyptian artefacts from the National Conservation Centre to World Museum Liverpool.

Naturally before such artefacts are moved consultation with the curators is absolutely essential. The advice and recommendations of our curators is a must to enable the safe transportation of these rare and nationally important objects. Some artefacts are quite large, heavy and delicate so need the utmost care when handling.

Our thanks for their knowledge and assistance ultimately go to our curators, conservators and project team members Tracey Seddon, Graham Usher, Richard Roberts, Barbara Rowan, Ashley Cook, Helen Thomson, Pete Spinks. Without their help and their team's assistance we as drivers could not possibly do our job to the standards required to move these artefacts safely.

I am happy to report that the artefacts shown are now safely transported and awaiting installation in show cases at World Museum Liverpool."

Visitors to World Museum Liverpool over the last couple of days will have noticed a distinctly Irish flavour to the events. Our very own leprechaun from the learning department, Ann-marie McGaughey, explains what was going on:

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 "This weekend World Museum Liverpool played host to the Liverpool Irish Festival. The festival takes place every year and celebrates the special connection between Liverpool and Ireland. This year the festival runs from 17 October – 2 November.

This year, we had a number of events including drama workshops, singing workshops and traditional storytelling, using the tale of The Children of Lir. George Ferguson School of Irish Dance returned for a second year running and treated us to a fabulous display of Irish dancing, before getting us all up to join in with the Ceili!

This weekend we also learned about a very special lady called Kitty Wilkinson, who was brought vividly to life by a roleplayer. Kitty was born in Derry, Ireland and came over to Liverpool in the late 1700s when she was still a child. Kitty settled in Liverpool in later life and lived here around the time of the cholera epidemic of 1832. At this time a lot of people in Liverpool were living in poor squalid conditions, with a lot of overcrowding in houses. Kitty was fortunate enough to live in a house with a hot water boiler (the only one in her street at the time) and she worked out that if people boil-washed their clothes and bed linen, they would be less likely to catch cholera, as the disease could not spread so easily. She invited families in the street to use her boiler to wash their clothes and as word spread, she eventually ended up with 80 families using her boiler! She began to charge families a penny to use the boiler and was able to set up the first public wash house in Liverpool. Kitty’s work played a massive role in stemming the cholera epidemic in Liverpool at the time and she is commemorated with a stained glass window in the lady chapel of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool."

They might look like wild creatures but these dinosaurs seemed happy to oblige and form an orderly queue for the cloakroom!

This is a scene from World Museum Liverpool earlier today, when a delivery had arrived for the shop.

Just got hold of the video that greets visitors to the Only A Game? exhibition. There's a slightly larger version on the main site as well.

Only A Game? from National Museums Liverpool on Vimeo.

Think this is the lamest title we've ever used for a blog post, but in true alliterative tradition I've gone with it anyway. Saw two unrelated but interesting bits today:

1. The Incoming Passenger Lists for 1878 - 1960 are now available on www.ancestry.co.uk. The records of around 16 million immigrants, business travellers, tourists and returning ex-pats and their descendants are available for you to peruse. This is good news for those of you researching your family tree as you can search by port of arrival, name of vessel, shipping line, port of embarkation and date of arrival. And as well as passenger names, you can discover historical information such as the date of birth, occupation and, from 1922 onwards, intended UK address of each passenger. 

2. The boston.com website has some fabulous photos of Sun activity including close-ups of magnetic structures, a sunspot, an erupting solar filament and a solar eclipse. Fascinating and beautiful and well worth a look.

Despite being an Evertonian through and through, last week was quite a week for me in terms football encounters of the red variety.

First we had ex-captain and coach of Liverpool FC Phil Thompson attending the press launch of our new UEFA exhibition Only a Game? at World Museum Liverpool, and then I was lucky enough to meet some other famous LFC faces for a completely unrelated project.

This month’s national Big Draw campaign is aimed at getting people across the country to uncover their artistic abilities through a variety of creative projects, and in its 2008 Capital of Culture year Liverpool is having its Biggest EVER Draw.

Teaming up with a number of cultural centres around the city, NML has put on a programme of events which included a return visit to the Walker Art Gallery from Liverpool Cityscape artist Ben Johnson at the weekend.

Ben has worked with NML to encourage people to take part in an exciting project to recreate his Liverpool Cityscape as The People’s Panorama; dividing it into 400 squares and inviting Liverpool’s people - including Liverpool Manager Rafa Benitez! - to each draw a square…

So, in the name of art I swallowed my blue-pride and accompanied Ben Johnson on a trip to Liverpool FC’s Melwood training ground last week to get Mr Benitez to draw his square. Stepping into his office I couldn’t have gone any further into the heart of the ‘enemy’ if I’d tried, and the disloyalty to my team felt almost too much to bear. This feeling quickly vanished however on ‘bumping into’ Sammy Lee and the legend that is Kenny Dalglish as they left Rafa’s office. So, feeling quite overwhelmed, I resolved to enjoy the encounter…and help complete the mission to get Rafa to draw his little piece of Liverpool!

Rafa’s artwork can now be seen in the Liverpool Cityscape gallery at the Walker, alongside that of the Lord Mayor’s and 398 other people of Liverpool!

If you have you ever wondered what the North West was like millions of years ago then get yourself down to 'From coal to carnations', the new exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, which runs until 30 November 2008.

The exhibition tells the story of plant evolution starting more than 500 million years ago, when the local area was positioned on the equator on a dense forest-covered plain. The displays include fossilised evidence of the ancient plants that thrived in this environment, including material from a recently discovered fossil forest near Wrexham.

A number of items from National Museums Liverpool's Science collection are on loan to the exhibition, including seven Brendel plant models from the Botany department which are shown in this photo. The Geology department have also loaned nine fossil plant specimens, the oldest of which is around 370 million years old, and a replica of an ancient Argentine arthropod called Megarachne, that lived in forests during the Carboniferous age.

A photo from yesterday's Only A Game? launch. From left to right we have ex-Liverpool player, Phil Thompson, the UEFA Champions' League Trophy, Chairman of National Museums Liverpool, Phil Redmond, and Vice President of UEFA, Senes Erzik.

Yesterday saw the official launch of our UEFA exhibition - Only A Game? at World Museum Liverpool. Focusing on the pride, passion, cups and culture of European football it's bound to be a hit in such a footie mad city. Ex-Liverpool player, Phil Thompson, was there to do the honours.

Only A Game isn't all Everton and Liverpool, although there's plenty from both clubs. There's lots for every fan of the game including all four European trophies (shown here) which are rarely displayed together. They're not all on show for the duration of the exhibition (dates are here) so if you want to see all four you'd best get down to the exhibition pretty soon. It opens to the public this Saturday (11th).

Here's an update from curator of Egyptology Ashley Cooke about the work on the new Ancient Egypt gallery which opens at World Museum later this year:

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"Last week a team of forensic Egyptologists from the KNH Centre for Biomedical and

Forensic Egyptology at the University of Manchester came to visit two mummies in our collection. The one you can see in the photograph will soon be displayed in the new Ancient Egypt gallery that opens on 5th December. It is the mummy of a young adult woman of the Roman Period (probably about AD 100 - 400) but actually quite little is known about this type of mummy and this is why the team from Manchester came to visit us. Painted bandages carefully reproduce the shape of her body and her feet have been wrapped to appear as if she is wearing sandals. Across the chest of the mummy a plant fibre framework supports gilded amulets to protect the dead person in the Afterlife. Unlike other Egyptian mummies the top of the skull is left uncovered and her hair is still preserved in places. The other mummy the team looked at shares similar characteristics.
 
The mummies were donated to the museum in 1867 by the goldsmith and antiquarian Joseph Mayer. He purchased the mummy from the collection of Joseph Sams (1784-1860) who visited Egypt in 1832-3 and brought back an important collection of antiquities, much of which is now in World Museum, Liverpool and the British Museum. The mummies belong to a group of eight that all share distinctive characteristics and may indeed all be related. The mummies are divided between 5 museums: 2 in Liverpool, 3 in Leiden, 1 in London (British Museum), 1 in Rio de Janerio and 1 in Avignon. Over the next few years we are looking forward to learning more about these remarkable mummies that are quite unlike others in our collection."

A few weeks I introduced the Philadelphia ornithologists Nate Rice and Robert Driver, who came to World Museum Liverpool to skin and preserve bird specimens both for our collection and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

During a busy few weeks in Liverpool they completed an incredible 150 specimens, all of which were salvage birds kept in frozen storage. Salvage birds are local birds that members of the public have donated to the museum after finding them dead. We had an excess of common local breeds in storage, which were not represented in the Academy of Natural Science's collection. So in return for being given the surplus salvage birds that we didn't need for our collections, Nate and Robert prepared 19 specimens for the World Museum collections.

There are too many bird skins to put into one small blog post, but you can see more in our Flickr slideshow of the Philadelphia ornithologists, including early photos of some of the first bird skins that they worked on pinned out to dry. There are also photos of Nate and Robert on their last day in Liverpool with all of the specimens that they prepared.

Nate would like to collect more European bird specimens, particularly species that were not available this time, and is hoping to return to Liverpool in a year or two. So if you find a bird then World Museum Liverpool would like to hear from you. Please don't bring any in without contacting the museum first. You can email Clem Fisher or Tony Parker in the zoology department to find out if the bird you have found would be of interest and to make arrangements.

Further to my earlier Mandy Mandala Superlambanana post, I've now been told that Mandy is such a superstar that she even has her own website! You can check out pics showing how she was made and read more about the artist that created her...

A strange beast has found its way into the the World Museum - luckily she seems to be quite docile and friendly! Mandy Mandala Superlambanana has now settled into her new home in the atrium of the museum and has been greeting visitors since last week.

Decorated in a colourful mosaic style, she was designed by artist Patricia Lee for Arts In Regeneration, in association with the communities of Granby, Dingle and Toxteth in Liverpool 8. You may have seen her on show at the bottom of Princes Road, Toxteth, earlier this year before she was bought at the Superlambanana auction and donated to National Museums Liverpool this month.

I'm off to Mandy Moos Milkshake Bar in Grand Central to have an Oreo flavoured milkshake to celebrate.

Here's an update on the refurbishment of one of Wold Museum's most popular galleries from antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge:

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"In putting together the new ancient Egypt gallery at World Museum Liverpool we are introducing many new objects, but also bringing back some old friends. One favourite from the old Egypt gallery was a statue base that once held a statue of the famous pharaoh, Ramses II. 

The base was on open display and, for over 30 years, thousands of hands have traced the king's names and the pictures of prisoners carved on its sides. All this touching left the statue base very dirty. In order to show it to its best in the new gallery, our conservators have cleaned it and now the beautiful travertine stone can be seen by all.

The Ramses II statue base will be back on display when the Egypy gallery opens on 5 December this year."

Another month, another competition and another prize in our 'name that object' competition. Actually, it's the same prize as last month - a set of Beatles figures - but as so many people entered last time we figured they were popular and are offering another set this month. First clue appears on Monday morning (22nd). If you're keen to get your mitts on the figures you might want to visit the John Moores exhibition that starts this weekend and have a wander around the rest of the gallery while you are there...

About 18 months ago John Edmondson used this blog to appeal for living descendents of William Roscoe to get in touch. Plenty of people did contact him and some met up (see John's follow up below). If you'd like to contact John about this project use this contact form.

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To mark the publication of Jyll Bradley's book "Mr Roscoe's Garden" on the history of Liverpool's botanic gardens, and the launch of her photographic exhibition "The Botanic Garden" at the Walker Art Gallery, a reunion of William Roscoe's relatives took place on 17 September 2008. Eight descendents of the Roscoe family (the youngest only twelve days old) met at World Museum Liverpool for a chance to inspect Roscoe's cultivated plant collections from the original Liverpool Botanic Garden, after which they visited the City Library where Janet Graham, special collections librarian, showed them some of his botanical drawings in the Oak Room. The visit concluded with lunch at the Athenaeum, founded by William Roscoe in 1797.
 
Plans were discussed for a more extensive reunion of Roscoe family members in 2010, by which time we hope that the contacts established today will have led to a 'joining up' of the various family trees. One family has traced its ancestors back to William Roscoe's grandparents and beyond, to the delight of others who had been unable to progress beyond his father. We look forward to hearing from other Roscoe relatives so that we can update them with these plans.

The Zoology department at World Museum Liverpool is currently taking part in an important international collaboration with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia that will enhance the collections of both institutions.

The Academy of Natural Sciences has a huge ornithology collection of more than 200,000 specimens, which they add to every year. This usually involves a field trip to a pristine location such as remote parts of Australia or Africa, where they collect specimens as an important record to benchmark environmental conditions before the impact of human disturbance.

This year however Nate Rice, the Collections Manager of Ornithology at the Academy in Philadelphia and Robert Driver, a student and acting curatorial assistant, have travelled to the exotic location of Liverpool. They are here to improve their collection of European birds, which are currently under-represented in the Philadelphia collections. World Museum Liverpool on the other hand has a lot of salvage birds in frozen storage. These are local birds that were killed by pets or found dead after flying into windows or other accidents, which members of the public have donated to the museum. The birds have been stored in freezers until they were needed. However, over time a surplus of birds has built up and staff in Liverpool have not had time to treat and preserve the specimens.

Nate and Robert are spending 3 weeks at World Museum skinning and preserving our bird specimens. This involves taking tissue samples, then removing the internal organs and bones and replacing them with cotton, then drying the skins. They will take most back to Philadelphia but in return for these specimens 10% of the skins they prepare will stay here for World Museum Liverpool's collections, including any significant local items.

Researchers around the world use specimens such as these for the study of evolutionary biology and local ecologies. Important information about environmental conditions can be gained from the feathers and tissue samples of the birds. Nate was keen to point out that the Philadelphia collections, like those at World Museum Liverpool, are seen as belonging to the world of science and are readily available for research purposes internationally.

Nate and Robert have been joined at World Museum for a couple of days by Henry McGhie, the Head of Natural History at Manchester Museum, who is taking the opportunity to hone his skinning skills by working alongside them. Curators in American museums routinely take part in field skinning so have a lot of expertise in this area, whereas UK curators usually rely on taxidermists to preserve specimens. Nate has been happy to work with UK curators in this way, as he has often used our expertise in other areas. For example, Clem Fisher, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum Liverpool, is a Research Associate at the Academy in Philadelphia and has visited several times since 1993 to work on their historical collections, which complement our own.

I had an email from fellow Wiganer and author of ‘Pies and Prejudice’ Stuart Maconie today. (You won’t hear me utter the ‘W’ word very often being a Saints fan, and incase you were wondering Saints and Wigan drew last week. But I digress).

Actually, it was really from England’s Northwest announcing a new set of short stories penned by the Radio 2 presenter. Each tale highlights some of the fantastic things you can do in the North West. Now I am a bit of a fan of Mr Maconie on account of his excellent musical knowledge and the fact that he always turns up at local events and supports grass roots events. I like that. So I have signed up online for a free copy (yes – FREE copy) of his short stories which will go to print early next year.

One of the stories is entitled ‘Liverpool Museums’ and we don’t feature as much as you'd expect – but he does give the Lady Lever Art Gallery and the Walker Art Gallery a mention, so I’ll let him off. Infact, what he actually says is, “Liverpool has galleries the way some cities have roadworks and the Walker is the Bill Shankly and daddy of them all”. High praise (but I hope it doesn’t put the Evertonians off).

Slightly less satisfying is the fact that The Beat Goes On exhibition is overlooked in the 'Liverpool Music' story. He does talk about Eric’s and The Beatles  though – and given Liverpool’s musical pedigree I expect it is quite difficult to squeeze it all in.

Stuart, if you are out there then come and see the exhibition because you would absolutely love it, from Billy Fury’s guitar to The Zutons’ video props, but especially all the Eric’s stuff. I’ll stand you a pie and a pint if you make it.

While I’m here I’d also like to extend that offer to Mr Charley Boorman who metaphorically sprinted through Liverpool on his latest adventure, 'By Any Means'. I have been following Charley for many a year, in the motorbike series 'Long Way Round' and 'Long Way Down' with Ewan McGregor, as well as the brilliant 'Race to Dakar'. So I was absolutely gutted when he jumped off the ferry in Liverpool, hailed a black cab and legged it onto the train at Lime Street without seeing anything at all. To add insult to injury he went on to sleep overnight at the Transport Museum in Coventry where one of his Long Way bikes resides. And he didn't even say hello!

Note to Charley - all is forgiven - but you definately should’ve used the Wacker Quacker if you were looking for different types of transport.

I’m determined to get to Manchester Art Gallery to see Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren Child before it ends. Lauren Child is the author of the wonderful Charlie and Lola series. The trouble is, everytime I try and get there, there’s just too much happening in Liverpool and I end up spending the weekend at visiting one of our venues.

Take this weekend for example. It’s the BA Festival of Science. Now science isn't really my bag – but the festival isn't what you think. At World Museum Liverpool on Saturday, for instance, we’ve got some opening events with Adam Hart-Davis. (I know him best from TV’s 'What The Tudors Did For Us' series). These include firing rockets, digging for fossils, creating your own big bang and lots of other stuff happening. 

Something else that took my eye was 'The Search For Extraterrestrial Life' lecture at the University of Liverpool which is being hosted by leading experts in astrobiology Professors Monica Grady, Barrie Jones and John Zarnecki. Any budding Mulder and Scullys out there? And I also stumbled across the Magical Memory Tour  which is supported by The Beatles Story (amongst others). This scientific study about memory is based on people’s reflections and experiences of the Beatles and Beatle-linked events. You can add your own thoughts on the website and the findings are to be revealed during the festival.

If you are of a nervous disposition you may not want to venture into town at all this weekend with La Princesse on the move courtesy of Sultan’s Elephants’ spectacular Company La Machine . (Listening to The Cure on iTunes is really not helping at this time). And if a giant mechanical spider isn’t enough to scare you silly can always bob into the Bug House to see if the short fat hairy ones do the trick.

Hmmm – perhaps I’ll get off my tuffet and go to Manchester. As Lola would say, "I'm just not keen on spiders". I’d rather meet Soren Lorenson.

If you didn't have access to a computer over the weekend you mightn't have seen the answer to August's 'name that object' competition. The answer was 'The Annunciation' by Edward Coley Burne-Jones, and the winner was C Sharp of Liverpool. Another competition and another prize next month.

Ashley Cooke on the mummies in the new Ancient Egypt gallery.

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The museum has about 60 animal mummies of various kinds, from crocodiles to dogs. In the new Ancient Egypt gallery there will be eight animal mummies on display in a showcase dedicated to animals. One of the mummies appears to be that of a very young lamb (museum accession number M13648). It was given as a gift to the museum in 1867 by the jeweller and antiquarian, Joseph Mayer. The intricate pattern of the bandages suggests it is of the Roman period (about 30 BC - AD 200). The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden has 3 similar mummies that have been X-rayed and proven to contain the bones of very young lambs. We decided to X-ray our mummy to confirm the identification and the mummy's association with the god Khnumn, who is often depicted with a ram's head. We used the digital X-ray machine within the Reveal exhibition gallery at National Conservation Centre. We are now examining the results with the assistance of other colleagues.
 
But why was this little lamb killed and mummified? From the 26th Dynasty and on into the Roman Period (about 664 BC - AD 395) animals would be mummified en masse at cult centres for gods that were associated with animals. One such site was the temple at Bubastis which was sacred to the goddess Bastet. Bastet was often depicted in the form of a cat and pilgrims would purchase mummified cats so that they could make a votive offering (a gift) to the goddess.
 
Hundreds of thousands of cat mummies have been found in catacombs in Egypt. In 1890 about 9 tons of cat mummies from a catacomb at the cemetery of Beni Hasan were shipped into the port of Liverpool. They were sold off by the ton to be used as fertilizer. Bidding started at £3 per ton and gradually advanced to £5 17s 6. Thankfully this no longer happens!  If you'd like to learn more about animal mummies and how you could help care for the largest collection of animals mummies in the world visit the Egyptian Museum's 'Animal Mummies' website.

Here's a photo of a slightly surreal scene on William Brown Street today. In what looked like the world's largest game of marbles, these enormous inflatable balls were rolled down the World Museum Liverpool steps. Apparently this wasn't a re-enactment of the cult TV series The Prisoner or a new Olympic sport - it was all in aid of a bingo advert.

We're cutting it a bit fine with the August 'name that object' competition, but are launching it on Tuesday 26th August (so the final clue will be on Saturday 30th). The prize this month is this fab but vaguely surreal set of Beatles figures. I say surreal because, as you may have noticed, there's a crocodile on stage with them.  The figures are 'straight from the classic Beatles cartoon series' that launched in the US in 1965, and apparently the croc featured in the series. The mind boggles.

Anyhoo, should you wish to give the Fab Four and their crocodilian friend a home you first need to name the object from our collection. It's an artwork, with a new detail being revealed each day for five days. Enter using the link on the competition page.

Should you fail to win I'm reliably informed that you can buy these sets in the World Museum Liverpool giftshop where they are on sale as part of the The Beat Goes On exhibition.

For anyone spending time with the Tibetan community here in Boudhanath it is impossible to ignore the ‘Tibet Question’. Around the stupa storeowners sell t-shirts emblazoned with the Tibetan flag (which is banned in China) and the slogans ‘Save Tibet’ or ‘Free Tibet’. Although Tibetans regularly protest against the Olympic Games and Chinese rule in Tibet, freedom of speech here is not unconditional. The Nepal government has banned performances of Tibetan dance and opera and institutes, monasteries and schools have been warned against participating in protests or speaking out against the Chinese government, as this could result in the closing or removal of the organisations.

So with this in mind, I will just make a few observations regarding the Tibetan community’s efforts in the run up to, and during, the Olympics. The first thing to note is that the majority of protests, here in Kathmandu, go unreported, even in the Nepalese press. For the past week, protest, vigils or silent gatherings have been happening every day. The routine is the same, protestors arrive at the Chinese Embassy, in Kathmandu, protests are made, the police control the protestors, sometimes with beatings and nearly always with arrests, protestors (on average between 100 and 300 a day) are arrested, put in jail for the night, released, and then wait for the next day’s rendezvous point to be arranged.

The second thing to note is that the protestors come from every part of the Tibetan community. The protestors aren’t just nuns, monks and students, but young mothers, housewives and shopkeepers. Everyone wants to play a part in keeping Tibet in the World’s thoughts.

On August 8^th major protests took place across Kathmandu with over 1,400 arrests being made. Tibetan shopkeepers closed their stores in protest against the Olympics, some for several days. This is not an empty gesture, with food and fuel shortages in Nepal affecting everyone; this is a major sacrifice and will have a big effect on the incomes of many Tibetan families, especially in Boudhanath.

On my last full day in Nepal - the 14th August - there was another major protest and again young and old gathered in their thousands to remind everyone of the Tibetan cause. Tibetan shops here is Boudhanath closed as people made their way to the Chinese Embassy.

They’re not small, or fluffy, but they have certainly proved to be cute and cuddly.

The Superlambananas, which have taken the city by storm in Culture Capital year, are now approaching their final week on display and I will be sad to see them go.

Here at National Museums Liverpool, we have been watching visitors engage with our own Superlambananas – located at World Museum Liverpool, The Walker Art Gallery, The National Conservation Centre, and the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight. These colourful creatures have been receiving a lot of hugs and will no doubt feature in hundreds of photograph albums and holiday snaps.

If you haven’t been to see our flock, remember they will be going away on August 25 – so we’ll see you soon!

This week has been a particular special one for the Tibetans living here in Boudhanath.The weekend saw two very good days for gaining extra merit. It had been calculated that on Friday and Sunday just one good deed on these days would be worth 10 thousand, or on Sunday, 10 million good deeds! To take just one round of the stupa, give money to the needy or to just be nice to the people you know would be a very auspicious or fortunate thing to do.

Then on Monday, Chökyi Nyima, the head Rinpoche or teacher of the Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery, known locally as the White Gompa, (this is the monastery I go to school in) came home. The monks lined the path to the monastery and offered Rinpoche 'khata', the white silk scarf that is such an important part of Tibetan culture. Rinpoche blessed each scarf then placed them over the monks' shoulders. It took him some time to bless each khata offered, but finally he made it to his room - we knew this because his pet dogs barked happily a few moments after he climbed the stairs.

The following day the Rinpoche's first puja since his return took place. This puja also coincided with the date that the Buddha of this era descended from Tushita Heaven to live as the human Siddhartha Gautama. Pujas were held all across Boudhanath, and trumpets, conch shells and chanting could be heard throughout the night.

Of course, the Tibetan community here in Boudhanath is being kept busy with other non Buddhist matters this week. Today the Olympic Games opens in China and this week has seen an increase in the protests and vigils happening across the city.

This morning I saw an article on the BBC site on the megalodon - a giant prehistoric shark - and the strength of its bite. It seems its jaws exerted something between 10.8 and 18.2 tonnes of pressure as it bit down which is pretty impressive for an animal that had a cartilege jaw.

It reminded me of a quiz we did a good few years ago now where a fossilised megalodon tooth was one of our exhibits (the quiz is here if you want a go, or just skip to the megalodon bit and see the tooth). It was pretty awesome handling that tooth.

Something that did strike a chord in the article was the bit about your average house cat. Apparently pound for pound the cat has the stronger bite, which if you've ever tried to push a pill down your cat's throat you'll know full well.

I’m afraid it’s that time of the month when we prepare to say goodbye to another The Beat Goes On top ten. So if you haven’t already voted for your favourite track now would be a good time. It’s been another fantastic competition and I’ll be really sad to see the tracks come down.

We’ve been weeping into our pillows with Ellewood and Letters In Red … rocking out with Major Major, The Crew and The Extroverts … chilling with Minion TV, Sensorites and FoE … and singing our hearts out to The Lapis and The Affection. Ah, such sweet memories.

We’ve had almost 4900 votes so far this month with Ellewood and The Crew seriously going for it - but the race is by no means over, so vote now! The poll will close at 11.59pm on 31st July.

Don’t forget you can already listen to June’s winner, Jessica’s Ghost, on the digital jukebox in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool.

Last weekend marked the half way point of my time here in Kathmandu, Nepal. Not only was it my birthday, but it was also the school's mid-term break.

A group of us took a trip to a resort 12km from the Tibetan border, to blow away a few cobwebs and try to forget about Tibetan verbs for a few days. The drive was arduous, taking over 5 hours along roads that only just clung to the mountainsides. As we got closer to the border there were more and more landslides, many of which would have been completely blocking the road only a few hours before we arrived. We gave our driver several rounds of applause as he got us over yet another slide.

But once there we realised it was well worth it. The resort was made up of several tents covered with thatched roofs to protect us from the monsoon rains, and a fantastic view of a swollen river, perfect for white water rafting. While I'd just come to while away a few days reading and sighing at the incredible green mountains that surrounded us, others in the group walked the 12kms to catch a glimpse of the Tibet border. Alas security was pretty tight and the 'Friendship Bridge' between Nepal and Tibet was off limits.

Monday was our last day at the resort and a number of brave souls from my class decided to throw themselves off a bridge 160m above a monsoon-flooded river to try out Asia's highest bungee jump. Not for me I was content just to take the pictures!

So, after a few very relaxing days, I'm now back to school. I seem to have forgotten everything I learnt before the holiday, so working hard to memorize what seems to be an endless list of verbs and nouns.

When Liverpool’s music heritage is mentioned, you immediately think of The Beatles, or maybe Gerry Marsden; but there is so much to discover about the history of Merseyside’s melody makers at The Beat Goes On.

I popped in for an hour and found visitors spanning three (and sometimes four) generations remembering their past and enjoying the present, with some even aspiring to be part of Liverpool’s musical future, trying their hand and their voices in the singing booth.

There is something for all tastes, from tableaux on Fifties chart-topper Lita Roza and high-kicking Frankie Vaughan, to The Real Thing and The Zutons, while the kids seem to get a real kick out of dressing up in rock star costumes with toy guitars.

Posters, press cuttings and archive photos add authenticity, as do the good old 45 ‘singles’. I marvelled at the Parlophone and Apple labels which I recall from playing my mother’s records when I was a child. But the show also takes you bang up-to-date with interactive digital track mixers.

There are sections devoted to Billy Fury, skiffle, jazz and folk, before reaching Merseybeat. It’s wonderful to see master of mirth, Ken Dodd, in the early years. His ballad, Tears, topped the charts for five weeks in 1965, after all.

For me, listening to visitors’ reactions enhanced the experience. "Ay, look at her!" exclaimed one woman, nudging her husband towards a photo of a very young Cilla Black. They went on to gaze wistfully at Cilla’s frock, one she wore for a 1960s Top of the Pops appearance, on display in a glass case.

A little girl was so excited by the music she was listening to, through headphones, she yelled to her mother: "Come and hear this, Mum, it’s boss!"

Despite being a Beatles fan, I like the fact that theirs is not the first and most obvious display when entering the exhibition and instead they take their place in the exhibition’s timeline. The stage from St Peter’s Church hall in Woolton, the meeting point for Lennon and McCartney, and the blanket from John and Yoko’s Bed-in For Peace protest are iconic, but funnily enough I found John Lennon’s jacket very moving. I could picture him wearing it.

The timeline includes key historical moments, including England’s World Cup victory in 1966, Lennon’s assassination in 1980 and the city’s industrial decline in the same decade. ‘Back In The DHSS’ by Half Man Half Biscuit is a perfect example of how the political scene influenced music and how Liverpool humour always shines though in the face of adversity.

I learnt about Eric’s club and why it closed (licensing problems). Of course, Frankie Goes To Hollywood is celebrated, and there is also an atmospheric Cream club scene installation. And so much more.

Like a favourite piece of music, The Beat Goes On is something I’ll happily revisit. And I am certain to find even more gems the next time … and the next. Meanwhile, I’ll be voting for Merseyside’s best new band on our The Beat Goes On myspace page – don’t forget to do the same!

You might have seen that we're currently preparing for the opening of the new Egypt gallery in December, however the antiquities team are also working with some of the Near Eastern collections. Ashley Cooke has more.

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For the past few years the museum has been receiving visits from Semitic scholar Dr Eric Cripps. Eric is producing a new edition of some forty-five cuneiform tablets from the Old Akkadian period (2210 BC), held in the Near Eastern  antiquities collection at World Museum. These tablets are over 4000 years old and were excavated in Iraq and purchased by the Honourable Arnold Keppel, 8th Earl of Albemarle, who was a Member of Parliament for Birkenhead. The museum purchased the collection in 1956.

The cuneiform script was invented in the fourth millennium BC. Cuneiform is a wedge-shaped script that was developed by Mesopotamian cultures. Mesopotamia is the area  located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that now incorporates Iraq and parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The museum has about 335 cuneiform tablets which is a sizeable amount for a museum outside of London. One tablet dates to the Early Dynastic Period (about 2900 - 2350 BC), 47 to the Akkadian Dynasty (about 2350 - 2150 BC) and over 200 to the Third Dynasty of Ur (2100 - 2000 BC). The Near East collection also includes other objects such as bricks and cones with cuneiform inscriptions. Eric's new edition of the Akkadian Dynasty tablets will provide hand drawn copies of each accompanied by transliterations, appropriate translations and full cataloguing. Eric's new edition should be published next year and will make a valuable contribution to Mesopotamian archaeology.

Ashley Cooke

Well, Toxteth TV in fact. Here's the lowdown from Jo Connor, the Treasure House Theatre co-ordinator at World Museum Liverpool, who was there to see all the action (and you can see some of her pictures in our Ancient Egyptians at Toxteth TV Flickr slideshow):

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"Curator Carolyn Routledge, Paul Browne, Mark Saunders and Paul McMullan from the AV team and myself have been involved in filming excerpts to be shown in the new Ancient Egypt gallery when it opens in December 2008. We had four fantastic actors - Colin, Eddie, Nalini and Maria - as Pharaoh Rameses, his architect  Bakenkhonsu, a Chantress and a House Maid. These characters from the world of ancient Egypt were all brought vividly to life.

It was fascinating watching the costume and and make up ladies weave their magic spells. And I was incredibly jealous that I didn't get chance to wear the wig Nalini had on for filming which Bill Watson from Design nicknamed 'the sofa' because of its size and shape.

Unfortunately we didn't get to film on location,(didn't want to spend a week in Egypt anyway... honest) but with 3 days in Toxteth (apart from the rain and the wind) I could almost believe I was there!"

On Sunday I went with my host Mother, Kalsang, to Swayambhunath, an important Buddhist site to the south of Kathmandu. Unlike Boudhanath, Swayambhunath sits on a hill overlooking the city, so for the first time in a few weeks I got to look up from my text books and have a really good look at the cityscape. Swayambhunath is affectionately known as the Monkey Temple, due to the many monkeys who live in and around the stupa. I’d been warned that these monkeys could be pretty mean and vicious, but the monsoon rains seemed to have dampened their spirits as they just watched as we climbed the steps to the smaller hill that sits to the west of the main stupa. This site holds a smaller shrine to Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, and while Kalsang had her reasons for visiting the shrine I also had high hopes that Saraswati would give me a little helping hand with my Tibetan studies.

We were there for a very particular reason: Kalsang had read the Tibetan calendar and consulted her Lama, and Sunday the 13th was a very good day for dedicating a series of prayer flags that she had bought. As the rain started to pour, Kalsang wrote her family's names (including mine) on a series of white silk scarves called Khatas. The khata is an important part of Tibetan culture, given as offerings in the gompas and stupas and also as gifts between people. Once all the names were written, each scarf had a small prayer said when it was placed on the forehead and then each was tied to a series of prayer flags.

Once the prayer flags were ready, the boys and men working at the stupa nimbley climbed the many trees to find a good place to attach the flags, so that their prayers could be sent out into the world. Kalsang gave offerings of juniper twigs to the stupa fire and recited a small mantra, to ensure the prayer flags' success. Finally, handfuls of tsampa (roasted and ground barley flour) were offered and thrown into the air.

Athough, the rain poured down, and it was unusually cold, Kalsang was happy with the day and was sure the prayer flags had been successful. I think she was right as my reading has really improved this week.

So, tomorrow I'll start my third week at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute, where I'm studying the Tibetan language. Classes are really hard work, but although progress is slow, I was actually able to understand a little bit of a conversation I heard on the street today so something is sticking!

Here's a little insight into my day.

I get up at 4.30am every day (weekends included) and go with my host Mother, Kalsang, to do Kora, which means to circumambulate (go clock-wise) around the large stupa at Boudhanath, which I showed you last week. I go for the exercise rather than to build up merit, but there is a good mix of people jogging, walking and prostrating at this time in the morning. After a hour taking the circuit, we meet up with Kalsang's friends and go to a local tea shop for sweet tea or jhar and to catch up on the local gossip. The women talk quickly but I'm slowly picking up the odd words.

We're back home for 7am, I have breakfast, do a little bit of study and then off I go to school for 8am. Classes are very intense. In the first week I had to learn the alphabet and the many changes that happen to the sounds of words once another letter is put in front or behind it. I'm still getting to grips with this and I hope that the extra classes I'll be fitting in from next week will help me get this straight in my mind! The unique thing about the school is that for two hours a day we get to practice our Tibetan language skills, one-on-one with Tibetans. This is an amazing experience which allows you to pick up pronunciations and changes in tones much easier.

This image shows part of my route to school. You can see the stupa in the background.

Classes finish at 1.30pm, but that's not the end of the school day. We have homework everyday and there is plenty to go over from the day's lessons.

On several days during the week, there are 'load-sheddings' across Kathmandu, which basically means that the electric power goes out across Boudhanath for a couple of hours. This is done for all sorts of reasons, to stop the system over-loading, but it means that study is pretty impossible after 7pm, so it's often an early night ready for my 4.30am start the next morning.

I am loving every minute of it, but without a doubt this is the hardest thing I have ever done!

More later in the week, homework permitting!

Michelle O’Callaghan, our youth arts officer, has this great news:

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"Young people from National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre, Lady Lever Art Gallery Junior Guides and Culture Vultures course participants achieved a rip-roaring success when they joined forces last Saturday to have their Young People's Arts Awards moderated.

The Young People's Arts Award, run by Arts Council England and Trinity Guildhall, enables young people to achieve a nationally recognised qualification at three levels (Bronze, Silver and Gold) through their participation and enjoyment of the arts.

It encourages the young people taking part to think about their own development as artists and encourages development of leadership, communication skills and confidence, as well of development of their own artistic skills.

At Bronze level the award involves taking part in arts activity, enjoying the arts as an audience member, researching an arts hero or heroine and leading an arts activity for peers.

This is the first assessment and moderation since NML became an Arts Award Centre in 2007 and there are currently two trained Arts Award advisors within NML; myself and Lauren Gould, learning officer at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

16 young people's work was moderated last Saturday and we are very pleased and proud to confirm that all 16 were successful in achieving their Bronze Arts Award.

Certificates will be winging their way to the young people very soon and they will be treated to a presentation evening to mark and celebrate their success.

A big thanks goes to all of the young people involved for all their hard work on the award and a massive well done on their success! It is well deserved!

Congratulations to the following young people who successfully passed their Bronze Arts Awards:
 
Sarah Kenny, James Garland, Deniece Courtney, Natasha Sweeney, Marcella May Rick, Kezia-Jaye Atherton-Davis, Charlotte Clynch, Dominic Hughes, Laura Baker, Craig Parry, Kaz Worrall, James Woodfinden, Beckie Clarke, Keily Hogarth, Abigail Hill and Marc Taylor."

In the latest of our 'hidden treasures' displays, two exceedingly rare gold medals crafted by Tiffany and Co of New York have gone on display at World Museum Liverpool for the very first time. The medals commemorate the role of forgotten hero Captain Joseph Dayman RN  in one of the most important naval expeditions of the Victorian age.

In the summer of 1858 Dayman commanded HMS Gorgon, a support vessel involved in the joint British-American attempt to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The Navy assigned the Gorgon to assist the Niagara, the American ship laying half of the cable. Early in the attempt the officers recognised that the Niagara was off course.  Commander Dayman successfully guided the Niagara to its destination in Newfoundland. A reporter on the Niagara noted that Dayman did not sleep for five days during this time. Without his attention the project would have failed. 

In recognition of Joseph Dayman's contribution the Common Council of New York and the City of New York commissioned medals for him from Tiffany's. The medal awarded by the City of New York (shown here) is one of only nine large gold medals they commissioned. The other medal on display is one of only three medals ever awarded by the Common Council. It is decorated with a gilded piece of the telegraph cable around the edge.

You can see the medals in the atrium at World Museum Liverpool for the next 2 weeks. There isn't a confirmed closing date for the display yet so please check with the information desk - 0151 478 4393 - nearer the time if you don't want to miss them.

Antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge has been busy as her excavation project at Abydos, Egypt draws to a close. Here's her latest report:

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"Today we are packing up at Abydos. It is something of a bitter-sweet time here. Up until now we have been working frantically to finish all our work on time. Now the pace has slowed while we wait for the Egyptian inspectors to seal the magazines in which we store the archaeological finds. This means we can relax a bit after all the hard work, which is really enjoyable. What is a bit sad is that for most of us we don't know when, or maybe even if, we will return to Abydos.

Over the past week I have been working with the pottery from the tomb of Senwosret III. By studying the pottery we can separate any ceramics that date to the burial of the pharaoh from the material that dates to when the tomb was robbed. This task is quite difficult. The best way I can explain it is to say that it is similar to having put all your jigsaw puzzle pieces into one box because each of your many puzzles was missing some pieces. Many years later you decide to sort them out and put them together again to see what is missing. For the pottery we sort the pieces just as you would sort the puzzle pieces - by size, colour, type - and then try to fit the similar pieces together. I am happy to say we had some success. It is a good day when you get two pieces to join together!

After today our work will be done because everything is locked away. This will give us some free time to explore the area and then to pack our personal belongings for the 8-10 hour train trip to Cairo. I think I might go visit the Seti Temple again. It is only a 15 minute walk away from our house. This temple has its roof and the coloured scenes painted on the walls are still bright. This is extremely rare for an ancient Egyptian temple that is about 3,300 years old. It is well worth a final visit!"

Hello or Tashi Delek!

As some of you may know from the World Museum displays and the website pages, National Museums Liverpool has one of the great collections of Tibetan objects.

I'm here in Boudhanath, an area just outside Kathmandu, Nepal, which is home to a large Tibetan community. I'll be living here in Boudhanath for the next two months with a Tibetan family, as I begin to learn the Tibetan language.

Over the next couple of months I be blogging about my classes at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, my (slow) progress with the language classes and about life here in Boudhanath.

So as a quick introduction. The first thing you see as you come into Boudhanath is the stupa. This massive stupa is the centre of Buddhist life here in Boudhanath, with Tibetans, both laypeople and monks, Nepalis and Western Tourists all walking around the base of the stupa throughout the day, turning the prayer wheels found within the walls, visiting the gombas (monastery/place of learning) or giving offerings, particularly for the health of the 14th Dalai Lama. I've added an image of the stupa here.

I'm hoping to do a couple of blogs a week on things that I've learnt, or about events happening within the Tibetan community.

Before I sign of here's your first word of the day: 'Key'. Key means Dog.

Here's an update on prgress with the excavation at Abydos from antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge.

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"We are now half-way through our excavation project at the tomb of the Pharaoh Senwosret III here at Abydos in Middle Egypt. Jen Wegner and I have been working very hard on our drawing and recording of the small objects. The work at the tomb is winding down as Josef Wegner turns to drawing and planning the portions of the tomb that have been cleared. It has been quite a task with around 60 Egyptian workmen breaking up and moving large quantities of stone in extreme temperatures.  During this time we have been experiencing a heatwave with daytime highs consistently in the mid 40 degrees Celsius. At night it has not been getting below 30 degrees Celsius.  

Under these conditions we need to take some breaks. Our first day off we were invited to have a meal with one of the workmen and his family. Josef, Jen, their son Alexander (who turns 5 this month!) and I went to eat lunch made by Umm-Ibrahim. Because of the heat, we sat in the courtyard of their home cooled by fans. Alexander ran around chasing the chickens and searching for lizards. Umm-Ibrahim served us a typical Egyptian meal of chicken, molokhia, and a mix of rice and pasta. Molokhia is a particular favourite here. It is a gelatinous soup made of the leaves of the molokhia plant flavoured with garlic and spices.

The next weekend we took an extra day off and travelled to Luxor. It is about 2½ hour train ride from here. While there are many ancient Egyptian monuments to see in and near Luxor, the main attraction to us was staying in a nice hotel in order to get a rest from the heat through air-conditioning and swimming in the pool. We arrived back at Abydos refreshed and ready to take on the next few weeks of work."

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Lucy Cattell, press officer for The Beat Goes On to announce some very special news:

" It’s taken six weeks of campaigning and thousands of votes, but finally the announcement came today that Liverpool has scored the number one spot as the UK’s Most Musical City!

Taking the title in Arts Council England’s Take it Away search, Liverpool took 49 per cent of the public’s vote, pipping other Northern cities Sheffield and Manchester to the post, who claimed second and third places respectfully.

It’s such exciting news for the city, adding yet another musical title to our bow (we’ve also been hailed as the World Capital City of Pop by The Guinness Book of Records) in a Capital of Culture Year which has already drawn so much attention from audiences at home and abroad.

It’s also great news for National Museums Liverpool, confirming our suspicions that it was high time an attraction was put in place to mark the city’s musical history and influence on popular music around the globe.

The Beat Goes On exhibition is due to open at World Museum Liverpool on 12 July, and with only weeks to go this latest announcement is perfect timing to centre all eyes on Liverpool, showing that it still tops the charts in the hearts of the nation.

After seeing Sir Paul McCartney, The Zutons and The Rascals all live recently, it’s a privilege to live in a city where artists are proud to return to their roots, and I’m in no doubt that the title of Most Musical City is completely deserved. Old or new, our city’s sound is second to none! "

Work has started on the installation of the summer's big exhibition at World Museum, The Beat Goes On, which opens on 12 July 2008. The exhibition will explore Liverpool's musical identity over the last 60 years. As you'd expect, there will be a number of items on display relating to a certain fab four.

Head of furniture conservation Graham Usher is currently putting together one of those items - the very stage that Paul McCartney and John Lennon met on when John's band The Quarrymen played at a garden festival in Woolton in 1957. The Museum of Liverpool acquired the stage a couple of years ago and it was featured on the blog last year but this will be the first time that it has been on display in our venues. I'm sure it'll be a must-see for Beatles fans when the exhibition opens.

Here's one for all you philatelists (that's stamp collectors to you and me) out there.

Bhutan, a beautiful Himalayan kingdom, is this year celebrating 100 years of monarchy. To celebrate Bhutan has just launched the first CD-Rom postage stamp.

You might be wondering how NML fits in to all this? Well, it just so happens that we have a really important collection of objects and photographs from Bhutan acquired by early 20th century Brtitish explorers and Political Officers based in the area. In this collection we have a rare photograph of the 2nd King of Bhutan, Jigme Wangchuk and his wife that you can see here.

The Bhutanese Government asked if they could use the image in their new stamp collection and we were more than happy to see an item from the NML collections virtually returning to Bhutan.

There's just a few days left to submit your application for one of the 10 Creative Apprenticeships on offer. A number of Merseyside-based cultural organisations, including National Museums Liverpool, are involved in a project to foster emerging talent and give young hopefuls a solid grounding in the arts and culture industry.

By the end of the year-long apprenticeship you'll have earned a Level 2 Certificate in Creative and Cultural Practice, and a Level 2 National Award in Community Arts Management, but perhaps more importantly you'll have developed the skills and contacts you'll need for a career in the industry.

More details are available on the Creative Partnerships Liverpool website.

Here's some news from antiquities curator Carolyn Routledge, who has temporarily left her desk at World Museum Liverpool to work at an excavation in Egypt.

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"My time so far in Egypt has been fantastic! We flew into Cairo on 26 May very early in the morning and then set out by car on 28 May for the excavation. It was a 10 hour trip through the desert. It felt like a very long journey as taking the desert road meant the scenery didn't change much. Luckily we had air conditioning in the car. We don't have such luxuries where we are living at Abydos. We are staying in the American dig house set back in the desert along the ancient road that led to the tombs of the First Dynasty kings. The weather is very hot, reaching the low 40s Celsius.  Thank goodness we have fans!

We finally arrived at the dig house very late at night and very tired. The next day it was right to work setting up our desks and getting the objects organised to draw. I am working on the South Abydos project directed by Josef Wegner of the University of Pennsylvania. He is excavating the earliest known hidden subterranean royal tomb, which belonged to the pharaoh Senwosret III of the Middle Kingdom (approx 1850 BC).  Jen Wegner and I are drawing the objects that come from the tomb and the surrounding area.

It is early days yet, so not much has come from the tomb itself. This week we are drawing the mud sealings that were found near the entrance.  These are very small and can be very hard to read. The ancient Egyptians liked to 'lock' their things by tying them up and putting mud on cords marked with a seal, often a scarab seal. This is a lot like sealing a letter with sealing wax. On Thursday we went out to the tomb. I overcame slight feelings of claustrophobia to go down in the tomb and was able to go all the way to the burial chamber.  It was exhilarating to be sitting beside the sarcophagus of the king. 

The other reason it is great being here is that a number of the objects we are preparing for the new Egypt gallery opening in September come from Abydos. I can look out my window and see the area where John Garstang had his house and played golf among the dunes that hide the many ancient Egyptian tombs where he found some of our objects."

Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, dropped into World Museum Liverpool recently to announce funding for Find Your Talent, a new Government initiative encouraging children to experience five hours of culture each week.

While he was here Andy caught a rehearsal by members of our youth theatre who are preparing a performance for our next big exhibition The Beat Goes On. The group have created a physical theatre piece that follows the story of Liezah, a character from a song by Wirral band The Coral.

Admitting he was a Coral fan himself, Andy seemed very impressed by the performance and spent a while talking to the young people to find out what they thought of taking part in more cultural activities.

Liverpool city region, led by National Museums Liverpool and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, is one of ten areas around the country to pilot the Government scheme. The programme has been developed in partnership with The Bluecoat, FACT, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Tate Liverpool and the Unity Theatre. Principal partners include Liverpool Culture Company, Creative Partnerships Merseyside, Liverpool City Council, Knowsley MBC and St Helens MBC.

The Beat Goes On runs at World Museum Liverpool from 12 July 2008 and the youth theatre will be performing Liezah and other short pieces throughout the run of the exhibition.

Working on The Beat Goes On MySpace page has been an absolute joy for me, being someone who lives and breaths music – music of any kind, so long as it’s good. What a talented lot you are! Take a bow, Liverpool.

The good news is that inaugural Top Ten for The Beat Goes On is now online so you can share some of the fantastic music Liverpool has to offer, and vote for your favourite.  Yippee!

The winner each month will be added to the digital jukebox in the exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. Over the next week or so I'll give each artist or band a shout-out. Of course, these are purely my ramblings and TBGO will remain completely impartial.

First up is the refreshingly-talented Little Name whose gentle and breezy lounge-pop has a heart-warming summer melancholy about it. Think sunshiny Morrissey (possibly on a sun-lounger with a cocktail), sprinkled with a smidgen of Magic Numbers and Super Furry Animals. (Thanks for the blog, Leebo).

Still in the lounge vein, we welcome Walter Cheapskate, whose retro psychedelia is off-set by super-smiley Scouse rhymes – he’ll have you grooving all day long. I love this rather cheeky vid on XFM.

Finally, there’s the chirpy Joel Morton. His MySpace profile classifies his music as zouk – grime – shoegaze. Personally I’m getting The La’s or Lenny Kravitz’s Mr Cab Driver with a rockabilly lilt. With influences ranging from Elvis Costello to Napalm Death, it is probably best to make your own mind up – whatever it is, he makes it sound effortless.

Anyway – happy listening you lucky people – and don’t forget to vote!

(NB. Please remember these are just my humble opinons, not those of TBGO or National Museums Liverpool, and that we are not responsible for content on other people’s web pages / MySpace pages and / or their songs).

In this week's final post Amina tells us why she enjoys her volunteer role in assisting our Trading staff on the information desk at World Museum Liverpool. Amina is one of our vinvolved youth volunteers - she may even have welcomed you to the museum on your visit!

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Day 5: Amina

Hi, my name is Amina. I am a volunteer at World Museum Liverpool. I have been taking part for over a month now. I love working here because I learn new skills and enjoy working together with the staff. They are friendly, helpful and kind. They always have a smile that lifts up my day.

I would recommend everyone to get involved, you will love it! I know I have and it has changed my life.

If you want to find out more about volunteering at National Museums Liverpool, please email the Volunteers Team or ring them on 0151 478 4775.

Or for more news on youth volunteering opportunities (aged 16-25), please contact email us about youth volunteering or ring 0151 478 4017.

For more information about ‘v, the youth volunteering charity’ and for local volunteering opportunities to match your interests and passions, visit www.vinspired.com

Today, as part of National Volunteers week, Adam explains his volunteer role within the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum Liverpool. Adam originally contacted the Volunteer Team to arrange a work placement for his university course, however he has enjoyed his time here so much he has stayed on as a volunteer.

Day 3: Adam
I started volunteering at National Museums Liverpool in January 2008. As a student at John Moores University, I completed a work placement in the Weston Discovery Centre in World Museum Liverpool. After finishing my placement I really wanted to continue to volunteer my time in the Discovery Centre. Since working in the museum I have discovered a love for Palaeoanthroplogy and in particular human evolution. I have been able to develop my own ideas and at the moment I am developing a Key Stage 4 school session in human evolution. In order to do this I have spent time researching the topic and working with museum curators. My background is in Art History and Museums Studies but since volunteering in the museum and finding a new passion I have now decided to work towards a Masters degree in Archaeology.

If you want to find out more about volunteering at National Museums Liverpool, please email the Volunteers Team or ring them on 0151 478 4775.

Youth volunteer officer, Claire Olson, reports on the first meeting of the young volunteers group

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To really get National Volunteers Week off to an exciting start, our new Young Persons Steering Group met for the first time yesterday at World Museum Liverpool.

The founding five members are all aged 16-25 and whilst some have volunteered before, for others volunteering is a brand new experience!

The group talked about their interests and why they want to be involved with the v-involved Youth Volunteering programme at NML. They also toured World Museum Liverpool to think about existing and future volunteering opportunities that could be developed. We will be keeping the blog posted on any new developments.

Breaking News: 'Mersey v’s', it is!

Most importantly, the group now have a less formal name than Young Persons Steering Group, having unanimously chosen as their new name: Mersey v’s. The v standing for ‘volunteer’ and also a nod to ‘v, the youth volunteering charity’ who have funded the 3 year youth volunteering programme at NML.

Mersey v’s will meet once a month to champion the v-involved Youth Volunteering programme across NML; meeting with staff to develop new ideas and projects and also visiting other museums to meet with their volunteers.

If you are aged 16-25 and would like to find out more about youth volunteering and v-involved at National Museums Liverpool, or how you can become a member of Mersey v’s, please email about youth volunteering  or ring 0151 478 4775.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that there wasn't a May Name That Object competition. We were rather busy with the redesign for the main site (check it out if you've not already) and it kind of took a back seat.

Anyway, June's is now up with the first clue available here. As ever you need to figure out which object from our collections (and our website) the detail is from and email us the answer using the contact link on the competition page. There's a new clue every day this week.

We've had lots of enquiries from people wanting to buy the Art In The Age of Steam exhibition catalogue so that's this month's prize. Good luck.

We’ve just received an interesting memoir for the Botany library with the intriguing title “Naughty Man’s Plaything”. It is by Roy Vickery, who works in the Botany Department at the Natural History Museum, London and is illustrated by Len Ellis. It’s all about the folklore and uses of stinging nettles in Britain, and covers their uses for food (for humans), beer, food (for turkeys), medicine, plus a long section containing sayings about nettles and their local names. Each story is referenced to its source, making this a valuable addition to our economic botany literature.

One of my childhood memories is going out with my mother picking nettle tips in springtime, from which she made nettle pudding – essentially porridge mixed with nettles. Once cooked, they don’t sting and in fact they are very nourishing, particularly at a time of year when there aren’t many fresh vegetables to be had from your garden. Nettle pudding is a Northern speciality; a similar concoction known as Spring pudding was mentioned in the memoirs of Bernard Ingham, who was born in Hebden Bridge, not far from my own birthplace in Burnley. This was made from Bistort.

Our trading arm, NML Trading, is holding a Recruitment Open Day on Saturday 10th May. They're looking to recruit Team Leaders, Catering Assistants, Venue Supervisors, Chefs and Banqueting staff. They're looking for people who are passionate about catering for their daytime operation plus occasional evening work. You'll be working in Liverpool’s world class museums, providing high quality food and refreshments to over two million visitors each year.

To find out more about the roles on offer, bring your CV to World Museum Liverpool, William Brown Street, Liverpool between 10.30am and 4.30pm.

Over the past six months staff and volunteers in the Ethnology department have been unpacking, re-storing, documenting and photographing NML's little known Islamic collection.

This fascinating collection ranges from 12th century painted dishes from Iran, to 15th centruy pottery sherds from Fostat, an important trading centre in Egypt, to modern day tourist souvenirs. To whet your appetite here's an image of a wonderful dish from 12th - 13th century Iran showing a huntsman riding his sturdy horse.

Having unpacked the collection it was clear that it needed more attention and research. With the help of the Museum Partnerships department we have secured a grant from the Museums Association's Effective Collections scheme. This grant will pay for an Islamic specialist to come and review the collection and make recomendations as to how we can best use the collection, which might include new displays at NML, loans to other organisations or possibly more research into the collection's history.

I'll keep you posted on how the review goes and what we plan to do next.

Some objects in our collection are so large that conserving them is a two-person job. A good example is the 'All you need is love' bedspread, which is currently being prepared for display is the upcoming exhibition The beat goes on - opening on 12 July 2008 at World Museum Liverpool.

To prepare it for display the bedspread has been stitched to a backing sheet on wooden stretchers, which support it and keep it in place. Today textiles and organics conservators Vivien Chapman and Anne-Marie Hughes have been strengthening the bedspread with supporting stitches to key areas - a delicate process which involves passing the needle through the fabric from one person to the other, without being ever able to see each other. These stitches are so small that you wouldn't know they were there when you look at the bedspread but they play an important role in supporting it when it's on display.

The bedspread was originally used in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Montreal 'Bed-In For Peace' in room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal in 1969. It is just one of the fascinating pieces of memorabilia that will be on display in the exhibition.

There are more pictures in a Flickr slideshow of the bedspread being conserved.

Rachel Porter from the Aquarium at World Museum Liverpool has exciting news about nine youngsters who have made their first public appearance this week. As she's the expert I'll let her tell you all about them:

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"These adorable little babies were born in July 2007 and are now big enough to go on display on our Aquarium gallery.  They are only about 4cm long but will grow to be 20cm long and are being fed little shrimp called Brineshrimp or Sea Monkeys. 

The Seahorses were bred here at the museum from the parents who we keep in our quarantine area.  The male actually gives birth to the babies after brooding them in a pouch for only 2 weeks."

Today is day one in April's Name That Object competition and here is today's clue. To win a copy of the rather nice catalogue that accompanies the Art In The Age of Steam exhibition all you have to do is identify the object in question (it's an artwork this month) from the clues given every day this week, and email us your answer using the link on the competition page. Best of British.

Here's the latest update from Tom McConnell, who seems to be keeping busy on his work placement at National Museums Liverpool:

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Hello,

I’m now on my third day here at NML. I had a good day yesterday at World Museum Liverpool. Highlights for me were seeing the new Egypt galleries taking shape and a visit to the zoology department. I also fitted in a visit to the National Museums Liverpool stores where I spied a fab looking Paul McCartney poster.

Today I was back at the stores helping with the Museum of Liverpool project. There I had to locate and find objects for the up and coming The Beat Goes On exhibition. These objects included Stuart Sutcliffe’s Guitar, a Beatles 7 inch vinyl singles folder, a piece of fabric from the original Magical Mystery Tour bus in the film and Beatles bobbing-head dolls.

Can't believe no one's got this yet - thought it would have gone yesterday. The prize in this month's Name That Object game is still not won and today is the last day. This is today's clue - bit of a give away. All of this week's clues, plus the link to enter the competition, are on the Name That Object page. The prize is the catalogue from the recent Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool exhibition.

Here's what I think is a really rather sad post from John Millard, Director of World Museum.

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Sometimes at World Museum we get asked about the seal that lived in the museum before World War II.  At first we thought that maybe memories had been playing tricks, but as more people spoke of remembering a seal at the museum, we began to wonder if it wasn’t true.

A press cutting book in the Central Library has revealed the facts.  A seal named Paddy was kept in the aquarium at the museum from 1919 until 1936, and he was probably an Atlantic Grey Seal. 

A cutting from the Liverpool Post and Mercury for 20 September 1933 said…

‘Paddy, Liverpool’s pet seal, lives in the Museum.  He is sleek, intelligent silver-grey creature, spending his time gazing at visitors and swimming round his tank – preferably on his back.

‘He was caught with seven other seals in the North Sea seventeen years ago, but his companions did not survive. When he was presented to the city in 1919 by the New Brighton Tower Company, Mr. Evans, who was to be his keeper, inquired what his name might be.  “Well!” said his late master, “my name is Paddy so you had better name him after me.”

‘Paddy lives almost entirely on herrings.  When herrings are difficult to obtain whitings are substituted, but he does not like them nearly so much.  At 3.30 every afternoon people gather to see him make very short work of 4lbs of herrings...

Underwater Sleep
His coat, which he changes every August, is brown for the first week or so then changes to silver-grey.  Although he does not have his coat pressed, he has it sponged down every morning while his tank is being emptied.  The toilet over he has an underwater beauty sleep of about fifteen minutes.  Some authorities contend that seals do not sleep under water - they should see Paddy.  The extraordinary thing is that he can glide around his tank when it is empty, with a perfect swimming motion.

‘Although Paddy is the very soul of good nature he is not without a little jealousy.  Should Mr. Evans look into another tank too long Paddy makes a great fuss and lashes his water into a foam.  Thousands of children would not consider their holidays complete without paying Paddy at least one visit.’

The Liverpool Post reported the death of Paddy the seal on 17 August 1936 saying…

‘Many thousands of Liverpool people, old as well as young, will be sorry to hear of the death, which took place on Saturday morning, of Paddy the seal at the Liverpool Museum Aquarium.’

Some people have said the seal was called Sammy and back in 1928 a press cutting mentioned Edgar the seal at the museum, but the story of Paddy and his keeper Mr Evans seems to be the most authentic.

Today it would seem cruel to keep a seal in a tank in the museum, but for seventeen years Paddy the seal was a star attraction at the museum.

Here's a report from Ann-marie Cassidy, our project worker for engaging refugees and asylum seekers, about some of this weekend's activities.

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"Saturday was International Women's Day. This special day is celebrated every year on 8th March. Throughout the world thousands of events are held to inspire women and honour their achievements.

Here at World Museum Liverpool we celebrated International Women's Day with a number of special activities.

We began in the atrium, with an activity called 'Home Sweet Home?' We erected a temporary shelter, which we hoped would represent the shelters often used by displaced people fleeing their homes in times of crisis. We wanted visitors to think about the things that were really important to them, by asking the question:

'If you had three minutes to leave your home, what would you take with you?'

We asked visitors to write or draw their answers on the shelter. Answers ranged from the emotional: mum, dad, dog, rabbit; to the practical: tent, Swiss army knife, torch, matches; to the sentimental: photographs, jewellery. A number of people also said that they would bring their computer games - until their friends pointed out that there would be nowhere to plug in their computer! All in all, it was a very thought-provoking activity.

This was followed by a textile workshop with Maryam Patala, based on the textile piece Freedom - who’s set the borders? (currently on display on the World Cultures gallery). Visitors had the opportunity to improve their sewing skills and learn about the appliqué technique used by Maryam to create the piece." 

You can see more photos of the 'Home Sweet Home?' shelter on our Flickr page.

The second of what will hopefully be a monthly feature (prizes allowing) begins on Monday. Name that Object shows a new detail from an object in our collection every day for five days. Could be from any venue and any collection.  To win the prize all you have to do is identify the object and be the first to mail us the correct answer (use the 'contact us' form link on the competition page). As there's only one prize - the rather excellent catalogue that accompanied the recent Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool exhibition - most of you will be 'playing for fun', and it is fun as you'll discover if you check out last month's game - bit of a warm up for you.

Here's a snap of last month's prize - a Superlambanana now christened Hogarth (I'll leave you to figure out why) - happily ensconced in his new home. His new owner got the answer right on clue one so you'll probably have to be there from kick off on Monday to be in with a chance. To make it a bit easier I'll tell you it is a painting and it is featured on our website.

You can also play via the rss feed so there's no chance of you missing a clue.

Make sure you check out 'The Pool' show with Dave Monks on BBC Radio Merseyside, from 8pm this Sunday 2 March! I'm going to be on choosing my top three favourite Liverpool tracks of the moment and talking about 'The Beat Goes On'.

So tune in to hear my choices...a bit of eighties, a bit of punk and some wooly-hat-wearing-Velvet-Underground- meets-psychedelic sounds. I once did a similar thing choosing some tracks on the fantastic Halton FM a few years ago (yes, the dizzy heights of stardom) but at the BBC you get free coffee and the microphones are bigger.

If you miss the show you can also listen online for a week after it has aired by going to the BBC Liverpool website.

BBC Radio Merseyside – 'The Pool'

Every Sunday evening from 8-10pm

BBC Radio Merseyside 95.8 FM, 1485 AM and on digital

Any Welsh mothers out there should be spoilt rotten this weekend, for not only is it Mother's Day on Sunday but it's also St David's Day on Saturday.

E-cards for both occasions are available online, including a host of golden daffodils (well, 3 daffodils including a white one, but they're all very beautiful botanical prints from the fantastic collections at World Museum Liverpool) in the brand new St David's Day e-card selection.

Then for Sunday you can choose from a painting or an Egyptian mummy in the Mother's Day e-card selection.

Just to let you know that Merseyside bands will get the chance to be part of the massive music exhibition, 'The Beat Goes On', if they join our new Myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/thebeatgoesonliverpool !

It doesn't matter what kind of music you're into, just join us as a friend and you will be in with a chance to become part of the exhibition, alongside bands such as The Zutons, The Wombats, Echo and The Bunnymen and OMD.

'The Beat Goes On' exhibition will start this summer at the World Museum and will celebrate the city’s music venues, bands and creativity. 

On the Myspace page each month, we will choose ten tracks from bands on the friends list. These tracks will be featured on the Myspace page as a monthly top ten chart, where the public will be able to vote for their favourite online.

Top ten bands will have their band and track name displayed on a wall in the exhibition to show the top ten for each month. The number one track at the end of each month will be added to a ‘digital jukebox’ in the exhibition and will become part of 'The Beat Goes On', giving bands great exposure for their music and the chance to reach a larger audience.

Voting will begin at the start of June when the first top ten chart will be displayed on the exhibition’s Myspace page.

If you’re not in band, but you love Liverpool music, you can still join The Beat Goes On as a Myspace friend to get the latest updates from regular news bulletins.

So what are you waiting for? There's already some tracks up on the site to keep your ears occupied until the voting starts, so check out some new music today!

Thursday saw the 2008 Academy Ambassador Awards which celebrate excellence in customer care in Liverpool. Three members of staff were nominated: Emma Calver from the Weston Discovery Centre in World Museum, Ros Appleby from the Learning team at the Walker, and Eddie Harvey from Gallery Services at World Museum. Emma fills us in on the night's events.
 

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We all had a fantastic night. The awards ceremony was at the Crowne Plaza hotel in the city centre, and as it was Valentines night there were lots of hearts decorating the ceremony, and the theme of people leaving their hearts in the city when they come to visit.
 
Several NML staff attended plus the nominees and their partners, and we were treated to a lovely three course meal.
 
Ros won the Family Friendly Award, and I won in the Arts and Culture category. It was a real surprise to win - I was over the moon.
 
Edwin was highly commended in the Visitor/Event award, and judges commented that the quality was so high in his category that any of the nominees could have won.
 
After the awards we all danced along to the Merseybeatles band.

Emma

Today we've launched what will hopefully become a regular feature on the site - our 'Name that Object' competition. We'll be revealing a new detail of an object (it's an artwork this time - bit of a clue for you there) every day for a week with the answer at the end. This is today's clue. There's a prize of a miniature Superlambanana to the first person to correctly identify the piece and to email us the answer using the form on the competition page.

If you're as forgetful as me you can always subscribe to the rss feed to get updates, or just click backwards to see previous clues. And as a final hint I'll tell you that the object is somewhere on our website. There, I've said too much already...

Alan Bowden, curator of Earth Sciences, told us a good few months ago now about a palm frond we'd acquired (more here). Now it's finally on display he tells us about its journey from subtropical Wyoming to the wall of World Museum.
Images from its conservation are on our Flickr page.

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Dinosaurs and their relatives may be on most children’s minds whenever they visit World Museum but there is another new exhibit which is worthy of mention.  This is a fossil leaf.  Not any ordinary leaf but an example of exquisite preservation which has given us a glimpse into a long vanished world.

The story of the greening of the Earth - the flora of our planet and how it has evolved to achieve the wonderful diversity of today - is a bigger story than that of the animals as it contains a record of all the changes that have occurred with our atmosphere and climate, and has the potential of demonstrating where our future lies. 

The newcomer to the museum is a frond of the extinct fan palm Sabalites sp belonging to the family Arecaceae.  This fossil leaf is 50 million years old and was found in Folly Quarry on the Lewis Ranch, near Kemmerer Wyoming, Western Lincoln County, Wyoming, USA. At that time Wyoming was a warm subtropical area with lush and exotic vegetation at the edge of a series of large fresh water lakes which were larger than the Great Lakes Region of Canada.  This is very different from the Wyoming of today, which has a high mountain desert with long winter snows and freezing temperatures.

It was found in a limestone rock known as the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation.  During the Eocene (50 million years ago) this formed as sediment that was being deposited in the fresh water lakes.  A lack of oxygen in the water caused many of the lake’s animals and plants to die, and also stopped bacterial action on the bottom of the lake. This meant that the dead animals and plants which would normally have rotted away were preserved in exceptional detail.  Complete fronds like our specimen are extremely rare.

The fossil shows numerous rays with bifurcating tips branching out from a sturdy woody petiole.  The petiole is well preserved showing a fibrous structure.  The basal attachment of the frond is of an unusual shape which indicates that this specimen may belong to a new, previously un-described, tribe.

The palm frond has spent a year being prepared by members of our conservation team and earth sciences staff. When it arrived it had been crudely covered with an acrylic based paint to ‘enhance detail’ with car body filler to hide cracks. The acrylic, body filler and some rock was very carefully removed to reveal extra details such as the natural colour of the specimen, extensions to the leaves, fragmentary remains of fossil fish beneath the leaf, the fibrous nature of the petiole and unusual features of the basal attachment. The fossil is now displayed on the 4th floor of World Museum and serves as a reminder of climate change over geological timescales.

I just wanted to wish a Happy Chinese New Year to everybody out there, as today is the start of the best year in Chinese astrology (in my completely unbiased opinion) - the Year of the Rat. Anyone lucky enough to be born in the Year of the Rat like myself will appreciate that we are charming, quick witted and generally fantastic people. So now that it's our year I think that's something to celebrate.

If you're in town at the weekend for the festivities you can see some Martial Arts demonstrations at World Museum Liverpool on Saturday or make colourful Chinese dragons, lanterns or fans in workshops at the Maritime Museum on Sunday - check out the What's on listings for further details.

I haven't got a picture of a Chinese rat from our collections, so instead here's a piece of 19th century netsuke which does at least demonstrate the sociable nature of us rats. Sharp eyed visitors to the Magical History Tour exhibition may also spot some hidden amongst the displays in a trail for children (don't worry, they are soft toys, not real rats...)

You can't have failed to notice that Liverpool is European Capital of Culture this year. The official People's Opening takes place this Friday, 11th January, at St George's Hall plateau on Lime Street. Took a snap this morning to show you the progress made with staging. The blue containers seem to form a stage area at either end of the plateau with another stage in the centre. Also looks like there's going to be staging around Steble Fountain, just outside the Walker.

As well as Ringo Starr on the roof and a community choir there's also what the Liverpool 08 website is describing as, "an epic aerial ballet of dancing cranes, containers and scissor lifts, as Liverpool celebrates the transfromation of the 'Big Dig' into the 'Big Gig'". All kicks off at 8:08pm (20:08?)

To mark the occassion, and because we are literally a minute away from the main event, both the Walker Art Gallery and World Museum Liverpool will be staying open until 10pm, with last entry at 9.30pm which is also when the venue cafes and shops close. If you're planning to take the kids to Big Art at the Walker we suggest you go early rather than later as it will be closing at 7.30pm.

The museum will be hosting a number of environmental organisations, which will complement the launch of an international school environmental project exploring climate change and disaster risk reduction.

And to cap it all there will be fireworks! Huzzah!

I've got some exciting news from my favourite Christmas fairy, namely Claire Noble from World Museum Liverpool.

Tomorrow at 2pm the Treasure House Theatre will be hosting a performance of the classic Grimm’s Brothers story 'Snow White and Rose Red'.

This adaptation by Tiny Giants theatre company promises to bring the strange, magical tale to life before your very eyes. Walk into a forest of dreams and watch out for the twists as this version of the classic tale has more Christmas spirit than a fairy on a tree.

Then don't forget that after Christmas the National Museums Liverpool's Youth Theatre are performing 'A Dickens of a Christmas' - their own retelling of 'A Christmas Carol'. If you didn't catch their antics in the museum over the weekend then try to make it to one of these shows.

Full details of all the free events and exhibitions taking place during the Christmas holidays at our venues are available on the website.

That hardy soul, John Moran, donned his duffle coat and ventured out into the freezing night last week in search of meteors. And in case you missed the shower this Shadow and Substance animation shows what they should look like.

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The last time I wrote a piece about one of the annual meteor showers was the 13th August Perseids, and back then I had to comment on what other people had seen, as I had no chance because of the cloud cover.

This time I'm happy to report that I had quite a successful Geminid meteor hunt. My viewing conditions were far from perfect as I was surrounded by street lights. Nonetheless within 30 seconds of bending my neck upwards, I had seen two Geminids streak just below their target constellation Gemini. As it was a very cold night, I had wrapped up well but was still only able to stand outside for about an hour before finally succumbing to the cold.  In the first half hour alone I had seen 7 and the final half hour I saw 3 more. The actual date of the Geminids maximum was to be 14th December but since this window started at 10.30pm on the 13th I thought I'd start looking from my back garden, which is more or less in the city centre of Liverpool, hence all the street lights, and my plan was to take a drive somewhere nice and dark on the 14th. I'm very glad I decided to have a go from the garden as the next day on the 14th there was the usual depressing cloud cover that normally defeats me.
 
The Geminids are one of the most abundant meteor showers of the year, with a Zenith maximum rate of 75 meteors per hour. They are also quite unique in that their parent comet isn't a comet at all but an asteroid called Phaeton, and because of this the stony material that forms the shooting star is denser and so can take longer to burn up in our atmosphere giving us a better chance of making our wish before it burns out. A colleague of mine was driving to work on the morning of the 14th and as she was looking out of her windscreen she saw probably one of the last Geminids of the night before it started to get light.
 
So as you can imagine I'm feeling quite smug about actually getting the chance to see one of the better annual meteor showers of the year. And my smugness isn't due to the fact that I got to see them while others didn't, but because I usually end up cursing the weather for spoiling the opportunity, and always feel that it deliberately clouds over just when I get excited about it. So the score for the year is Weather 9 v John 2.
 
One more thing, don't forget about the last meteor shower of the year, the Ursids, which peak on the 23rd December and has an hourly rate of 5. Although this is quite low they can be quite rich and so are still well worth a look.
 
John.

You wait ages for a great Christmas themed performance on William Brown Street then two arrive at once. Not only is the BBC Three Liverpool Nativity taking place there on Sunday, as I reported yesterday, the characters from 'A Christmas Carol' will be invading World Museum Liverpool over the weekend as well.

The theatrical invasion is in anticipation of the retelling of the famous Dickens story in the museum's Treasure House Theatre later this month. This Saturday and Sunday members of the National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre will be roaming the museum in costume as Dickens characters, chatting to the public and sharing a good dose of Christmas cheer or ‘humbugs’. So come along and join in the Christmas spirit - or spirits, depending on who you meet!

The Treasure House Theatre’s production 'A Dickens of a Christmas' premieres on Thursday 27 December and is on every day until Monday 31 December with performances at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. See the World Museum Liverpool What's on page for further details.

And while I'm on the subject, here's some trivia about the author to impress your family with over Christmas dinner. Did you know that Charles Dicken's daughter Kate was the model for the painting 'The Black Brunswicker' shown here? Usually on display in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, the painting is currently on loan to the fantastic Millais exhibition at Tate Briatin in London.

Anyone walking up William Brown Street this week will have noticed a large stage being constructed for BBC Three's Liverpool Nativity which is being broadcast live on Sunday.

It's a long time since I've seen a nativity play but I remember the last guests to arrive at the stable were the three wise men, who had travelled from far away to get there.

BBC Three have taken the 'moving the mountain to Mohammed' approach to choosing a location by building their stage right outside the workplace of at least three wise men and women - namely World Museum Liverpool. I don't know if any of our wise staff will be invited to this nativity but at least they don't have far to go if they do - they might even beat the shepherds.

They wont have to look far for inspiration for gifts either as the three traditional gifts brought by the wise men are all well represented in the collections. There is some frankincense and myrrh in the botany collections and plenty of gold in the antiquities collections, like this Anglo-Saxon gold medalet for example.

Personally I always like to get sweets at Christmas, so I quite like today's page on the National Museums Liverpool online advent calendar, which shows a special Christmas card from the famous local sweet factory Taveners.

Update 14/12/2007: Here's a photo of the nativity stage as it looked yesterday afternoon, on Flickr.

For the next two weeks, Rina, a Japanese student studying English will be working in the Ethnology department at World Museum. We're really pleased to have her here and we thought it would be nice for her to do a blog about what she is doing.

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Hello!

My name is Rina. I am from Tokyo, Japan. I am working in this Museum as a work placement for a month. I usually do computer work and store objects, but my main purpose is to improve my English skills through my work.

I study British and American literature in my university in Japan, and this work placement is a part of my language course studies. Before I came here, I studied English in university of Manchester for two month, and I moved to Liverpool two weeks ago. This work placement is a good experience for me and helps me to know the English work environment and improve my English skills.

I am interested in the exhibition “The Beat Goes On” because I am interested in U.K. rock music very much. However, it will open after I go back to Japan, so I’d like to come back here to see the exhibition!

Last week a group of us from National Museums Liverpool were taken on a ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the bug-tastic World Museum, so I thought I’d fill you in on what we saw. After visiting the aquarium we explored the learning areas, designed our own colourful fish in the Eye For Colour exhibition and then got up close and personal with a few six & eight-legged friends!

Bughouse Demonstrator, Jenny Dobson, took our group behind the scenes in the Bughouse where we were introduced to a pregnant Flat Rock Scorpian (let’s call her Sally) who is expected to give birth to up to 100 babies in the next few months! We also came face to face with a Mexican Red-Kneed tarantula (let’s call her Tammy) who thankfully stayed very still, unlike her more boisterous male tarantula neighbour who looked like he wanted to escape. Apparently you can tell between the sexes if you compare the size of their rear ends – females have larger bottoms. I decided to give them these names as Jenny told me that she had stopped naming the bughouse residents due to her getting too attached to them! Thanks to Laura Healy for these great photos.

Textile conservator Anne-Marie Hughes has been preparing this 2000 year old Egyptian shroud for display in the new Egyptian gallery at World Museum Liverpool, which opens next year. I was privileged to see it in her studio while she was working on it.

The shroud was framed in the 19th century and had been glued to the back board, so Anne-Marie has had to remove it, which was quite a job, before remounting it on silk. You can see photos of the shroud with the backing board and the silk backing on our Flickr page.

The pink paint on the shroud is going to be analysed to see if it's from Rio Tinto in Spain. Recent research by the Brooklyn Museum has revealed Spanish paint on one of their mummies.

Head of Antiquities Ashley Cooke told me more about the shroud itself:

"This is a small fragment from a large painted linen shroud that once was wrapped around a mummified body. It dates to circa AD 100 - 200, a time when Egypt was a province of the Roman empire. Mummification continued to be practiced during the Roman period but the techniques employed were inferior to those of earlier periods. It was common for greater attention to be devoted to the external appearance of the wrapped mummy. Shrouds were painted with portraits representing the deceased in poses adapted from Hellenistic Greek repertoire. The Liverpool shroud depicts the transfigured dead person who has assumed the identity of Osiris, appearing in mummy form in frontal pose. Osiris is wearing the Atef crown with a plume on either side and a small disc and uraeus at the centre. His hands clasping across his chest hold the flail and sceptre of Egypt.

The shroud was found in Egypt in 1870 but other information about the excavation was not recorded. The museum acquired this piece from the collection of the famous pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome in 1973.
 
Funerary shrouds such as this offer an interesting conjunction of Greek, Roman and Egyptian forms of representing the individual. Over the next year the museum will be carefully studying the iconography and artistic techniques used to further our understanding of this fascinating and beautiful object."

Today we travelled the 80km from Orissa's state capital Bhubaneshwara to the coastal town of Puri, a major centre for Hindu pilgrimage and the home of one of the most distinctive Hindu Gods, Lord Jaganatha; a manifestation of Krishna.

Along the way we stopped at several rural villages, many known to me through the work of a friend Stephen Huyler, a cultural anthropologist who has worked in Orissa with Babu Mohapatra for over 30 years. It was a privilege to see the work of the potters who effortlessly create beautiful water pots and vessels for the Jaganatha temple in Puri. Having dabbled in potting myself I know just how difficult it is to create the pieces that they shape in a matter of seconds.

We then moved on through several villages to the home of Maashri (pronounced Mousey), a 76 year-old woman who is a renowned alpana (floor painting) and wall painter. We were a little too earlier to see her work, as each home in the village had just been freshly covered in a mud/dung mixture ready for the painting that will take place in 10 days time to celebrate the end of an important month of fasting for women. While we didn't get to see Maashri's wall paintings she created a beautiful little Ganesha (the Hindu Elephant God, who is the Lord of New Beginnings), using a rice flour that she trickled into fine lines through her fingers. This practice of wall painting is slowly changing as many homes in the village are now pukka (cement) rather than the traditional chakka (mud/dung), which women are reluctant to decorate as the walls are not able to be renewed with mud/dung plaster once the painting needs renewing. We sat and drank tea and the family asked me many questions about my life, they were particularly interested in my decision to have a career rather than a family. They were also distinctly unimpressed with my style choices as one of Maashri's grand-daughters quickly ran for nail polish and bindis (a small dot that is placed between the eyebrows) to beautify me!

Reluctantly, we moved on to our final stop, which included several stone carving workshops. Here I made my first purchase for the Weston Discovery