Overcoming challenges

A piece by Katy England, Look Again Project Manager

Look Again was originally a 2.5 year project which was to be completed in summer of 2020. During the first two years we worked with young people from St Joseph’s Catholic School, Wiltshire College, Youth Action Wiltshire and the Arts University Bournemouth as well as our dedicated team attending the weekly ‘collective’ at the museum and our enthusiastic Duke of Edinburgh students.

In January 2020 we finally started the practical work on the gallery. This included taking down the old displays, realising the young peoples’ ideas and mounting the items for display. 

By the end of February, the old gallery had been taken down and work was in full swing, the volunteer team were working on the mounting, the young people working hard on their evolving ideas and conservation was underway.  The workroom where this was all taking place was open to visitors two days a week so they could see the work in action. 

In March when the first lockdown was announced the project was put on pause.  One of the first things we did was set up a blog to create a space where the team of volunteers and young people working on Look Again could share some of their amazing stories and knowledge. Some of our team of volunteers and young people took over the running of this, as well as the project Instagram account.

It soon became clear from the blog just how many stories had been created by the project – from the stories of the objects themselves, the reasons individuals have chosen to be involved and much more. And you can read many of those stories on this website.

We briefly returned to Look Again in the Autumn of 2020, and our first priority was to look at ways that some of the team of volunteers and young people could return to work on the project in a safe way.

When we came back there were of course many changes to make sure the working environment was safe, but the mannequins were as we left them and seemed like old friends waiting to welcome us back!

We reflected on whether there were any advantages to the break and concluded that there was at least one small silver lining. We didn’t need to worry about how long to leave the cases open to let the new paintwork ‘off gas’ and make sure the fragile historic garments are not damaged by fumes. They had had months for this to take place!

After lots of careful thought, we were able to welcome back a small team of volunteers to the project and it was wonderful to see work beginning again on the mannequins. We also worked remotely with two of our young people, who helped us with the gallery text as well writing some great articles looking at sustainability.

But with the announcement that we were heading into a second lockdown, the decision was made to put the project on pause again.

In April 2021 we came back determined to finally complete the project. Our amazing team were still keen and volunteers returned in a safe way to carry on with the mounting. We also set up the collective after school club online through a mix of pre-recoded films and live zoom sessions. The panel designs, started before the first lockdown, were completed on these sessions and it was brilliant to see the young people again. 

By the beginning of August 2021, the garments and the accessories were mounted, the panels designed by the young people were in and we were finally completing the finishing touches. On 7 August the gallery was officially opened by fashion icon Dame Zandra Rhodes!

The amazing enthusiasm and dedication of everyone who took part in the project – including young people, volunteers, experts and the museum team – overcame the many challenges to make the Fashion Gallery such a success.  

You can watch a short film of the opening day here: