Hi I am Luke the apprentice working at Epping Forest District Museum.

I have been working on the 10 challenges set by Kids in Museums for Digital Takeover Day. As part of this I have been speaking to the team about how things work at the museum.

This week I spoke to Andy, the Design and Exhibitions Officer about how the museum puts the displays together!

How/where do you get items for displays?

It depends on what type of display you are working on. We break the displays into three different types. These are permanent, temporary and touring displays.

Permanent display – we would use objects or items from the Epping Forest District Museum’s own collections. These objects/items have a connection to the district.

Temporary displays – we could use objects or items from the Epping Forest District Museum’s own collections. We can get objects/items on loan from other national or local museums and individuals to compliment the displays.

Touring displays – can have objects/items included in the display but in addition we could use things that are related from the museum’ own collections.

How do you get ideas for the next exhibitions?

The museum team decide what the subject of the next exhibitions will be.

We may choose the subject for a display because – it’s an important anniversary or a noted individual or have seen a display at another venue or just because we want to.

The temporary exhibition programme is a changing one. We offer many different themes that hopefully will be of interest to our visitors. Touring exhibitions are part of this programme and we would use the same criteria to choose them. We would work in partnership with other museums that produce touring displays to see what might be available or suitable for us.