This year I was a recipient of one of the Roman society grants of £250 for a Museum Internship. I
submitted an open application and was placed in the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle. I
was overjoyed to have received the grant and the internship and even more pleased to learn that it
would be at the Great North Museum, as I knew it well having studied for my undergraduate degree in
Newcastle and used the museum facilities on a regular basis.
My internship lasted a week and I spent most of that week on a project to do with developing the
interpretation in the Roman Britain Gallery. My supervisor, Andrew Parkin was developing QR codes
that you scan with your phone and give you a link to text, website or youtube video. He therefore
asked Ghislaine, the other intern and I to choose 12 objects from the gallery to research and interpret.
He would then use this information to create QR codes that would be placed next to the objects in the
gallery. Having studied Ancient History and Archaeology, I was excited about the task of looking
more closely at objects associated with Roman Britain. Ghislaine and I decided to pick objects that
were associated with particular themes and choose 6 each. My topics were: Women, Children,
Building materials, recreation, the Roman goddess Venus and trade and commerce. I used the library
that is housed in the Great North Museum to research the items and included pictures and maps to
help explain the context. This information will be used to generate QR codes and give people a little
more information on the objects they are viewing in the Museum.
After finishing this task, Ghislaine and I also began developing ideas for displays that are going to be
placed around the Newcastle University campus from the collections of the Great North Museum.
This task required thinking about the entire collection as the Great North Museum also has exhibitions
on Natural History and Geology. We therefore needed to think of themes that encompassed these
exhibits as well, which was challenging but enjoyable!
I am extremely grateful for the opportunity given to me by the Roman Society. I had a thoroughly
enjoyable week and a good insight into how museum curators develop the information that they
include in displays. It was great that we could choose independently the objects that we thought would
be best to research and I look forward to using the QR codes once they are generated.
Emma Morris