This site is part of the South West Heritage Trust.
As part of our project work, it is important that we support Trust sites and engage with existing audiences, as well as trying to reach new people. For Christmas 2024, we were asked to help with ‘A Celebration of Christmas‘, which was a series of installations and activities at the Somerset Rural Life Museum over the festive period.
After our success working with local artist duo Ink Jam on the Cheddar Brooch project, we commissioned them to design and carry out workshops making angelic figures out of recycled materials. Across two public sessions, they supported museum visitors to make their angels, which we hung on a beautiful mobile display in the Grain Store at the museum.
Another aspect of this project included taking some Christmas objects from our museum stores out to different locations across Somerset. This helped us explore ideas about the festive period with participants, encouraging them to tell us their stories, to be included in an audio artwork alongside the Christmas tree in the Abbey Barn on the museum site.
To gather stories, we visited Court House Retirement Home in Cheddar, St Johns School/Jumping Johns Nursery in Glastonbury, and recorded museum visitors on our activity days. This ensured we had a range of stories from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, capturing the essence of Christmas and adding to the festive atmosphere and beautiful acoustics of the 14-Century barn.
