Wales & West Jour Fixe - 26 August 2015
Croeso i Sain Ffagan!
The morning began with a warm welcome of coffee and welsh cakes. Elen Phillips, Principal
Curator: Contemporary & Community History was our host for the day. The day was divided into
three sections - St Fagans future plans, a peep into the textile / costume store followed by skills
sharing to complete the day.
Elen presented to the group the Making History Project – a £26 million projected, funded by the
HLF and Welsh Government, to redevelop St Fagans.
The museum opened in 1948 and was the first open air museum in the UK, formally known as
‘Welsh Folk Museum’.
[The task] was not to create a museum which presented the dead past under glass but one
which uses the past to link up with the present’ – Iowerth Peate, the Museum’s first curator.
The concept to redevelop began back in 2008. The Museum is Wales’s most popular and
successful historical site, but its facilities and galleries no longer meet contemporary needs. The
project aims to transform St Fagans by totally refreshing the main building with new galleries of an
international standard, a temporary exhibition space, an extensive contemporary centre for
learning and a collections research centre.
The project will also involve constructing new buildings across the site including a sustainable
building for craft and making and reconstructing two significant, lost buildings from archaeological
evidence.
In the main building there will be two new galleries, ‘Wales is’ and ‘Life is…’. Costumes and textiles
will be displayed throughout these mixed-media galleries, moving away from the traditional
chronological displays of old.
‘Wales is..’ will capture moments in history of Wales from 230,00 years ago to the present.
Thought-provoking items from the collections will act as a springboard for visitors to shape,
explore, and record and share their own opinions about Wales.
‘Life is…’ personal not national. History is as much about the details of people’s daily experience
as it is about national events. Entering an environment rich in collections, visitors will get an
immediate sense of things that reflect the routines of life but on closer inspection reveal a
surprising depth of time.
Objects will be presented as evidence of the people who used them, wormholes that connect us to
the lives and concerns of other people. Visitors will be able to contribute to displays, adding stories
and memories to the snapshots of life in Wales.
During our journey to the costume / textiles store Elen talked about future plans for a centre for
learning and a collections research centre. The new centre for learning will provide an eight-fold
increase in space and will place learning at the heart of the Museum. Three flexible activity spaces
will provide facilities for exploring the collections through creative learning and practical play, skill
sharing, discussion and community collaboration. The centre includes a 120-seat auditorium.
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Whilst in the textile store Elen gave an overview of the collection. We looked at the Wrexham
Tailor’s Quilt – an outstanding inlaid patchwork bedcover made over a 10 year period (1842-52) by
James Williams, a military tailor. We also viewed a court mantua of the early 1700s, supposedly
worn by Lady Rachel Morgan of Tredegar House.
After lunch Dewi Jones, Weaver, shared his wealth of knowledge and experience working at the
Esgair Moel Woollen Mill. He has been working at the mill for over 20 years. The Mill is unique in
that it is one of few places where most of the processes to produce cloth from Fleece to Fabric
take place onsite.
If you have any suggestions of places or collections you would like to visit in Wales & West please
contact our representative for this region. All members of DATS are welcome to attend the visits /
study days.
On behalf of DATS Sarah would like to thank you the staff and Elen at St Fagans for their kind
generous during our recent visit to St Fagans.
Sarah Jane Kenyon, Wales & West Representative.
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