Heritage Interpretation
Writing Heritage and Art Interpretation Literature
Special guest lecture and supervisory session by Dr Denise Maior-Barron:
Advanced Work-Out
Creating a narrative conceit to frame the artefact. Examples, (i) 'Leaving Isca' - Exeter from a Roman's point of view. (ii) Integrating visit to The Exeter Book.
To cite this page only:
Maior-Barron, D. (2015) 'Writing Heritage and Art Interpretation Literature' Toureme, online Available at https://sites.google.com/site/touremetkt/home/heritage-interpretation, Accessed [add today's date].
More on-line lectures and supervisory sessions from Denise Maior-Barron can be found on her own Google Sites pages called Heritage and Tourism at:
https://sites.google.com/site/heritageandtourismstudies/
References and further reading
Parry, R., Ortiz-Williams, M. & Sawyer, A. (2007) 'How Shall We Label Our Exhibit Today? Applying the Principles of On-Line Publishing to an On-Site Exhibition, in J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds.). Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings, Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, Accessed April 19, 2015. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/parry/parry.html
Quiller-Couch, A. (1917) On the Art of Writing Cambridge.
Reflection After attending the supervisory day on 29th May 2015 at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro led by Denise M-B, real progress was made with understanding appropriateness in writing. I had wrestled with the issue of humour in travel writing, consider, for example, Bill Bryson, and felt that my Riviera piece was fixed in that style. Working through Denise's slides and her call for the travel writer to consider the reader versus the curator in heritage interpretation shows that in certain cases a tone of seriousness must be maintained by the writer. Museums are torn between being infantilised as children's entertainment spaces and remaining adult enough to be of interest to children who want access to a serious grown-up world. The same balance is needed in the travel piece. Humour may be ridiculing the writing itself and hence, inappropriately and inadvertently, rendering the piece worthless to the readers. I hope I can now apply this as I start to develop pieces of travel writing for the Loire project. – Charlie Mansfield
To read more on appropriateness in writing please see Quiller-Couch (1917) at the link above. We hope to be able to run a similar Practicum Day in the archives of Devon for ResM postgraduates.