Consultancy and Placements

The Regional Heritage Centre offers a range of consultancy services to voluntary groups and the commercial sector.

This can include collaboration on funding applications, training volunteers on archival, oral history and other research skills, and even producing a bespoke history of your organisation to commemorate a special anniversary. Contact us to arrange a free consultation.

The Regional Heritage Centre works with a range of museums, archives and other heritage organisations across North West England to offer students in the History Department the opportunity to take part in work placements as part of the second year of their degree. They are finding out what it is really like to work in the heritage sector, and are getting hands-on experience with objects, with documents, with catalogues, with educational outreach and more. One student described her experience at the Judges' Lodgings Museum in Lancaster for the RHC Newsletter, below.

RHC Placement Student Gets a Taste of History at the Judges' Lodgings

Before the pandemic sent us all into isolation, second year History student Natasha Robinson spent some time at the Judges Lodgings Museum in Lancaster. As part of her placement, she was working with a delivery of kitchen objects from the National Trust. Her report on this experience conveys her enthusiasm for what she calls a truly exciting opportunity.

From ornate figurines to a pair of bellows and a wooden mouse trap, the collection was absolutely brimming with nineteenth century history. My task was to unpack the delivery objects, assess their condition, take photographs and log this information into the heritage database ‘EMu’. This process was particularly important for storage purposes and future reference to the objects. Unpacking the boxes was a delight. Peeling back each covering of bubble wrap and tissue paper felt as though I was discovering snapshots of history, layer by layer. While the database work I completed taught me much about how the heritage sector functions, it was the objects which I enjoyed interacting with most. As I held the items, I wondered what stories could they tell us? Who had owned them? Where were they made? What had they seen in their previous homes? In this sense, the new Victorian Kitchen display can offer people a glimpse into the nineteenth century. Perhaps the most intriguing object to occupy the new display is a wooden mouse trap. Roughly 30 cm from the base to the top, with a box and a square handle, the trap is perplexing to say the least…how would such a thing have managed to catch mice? I think the trap will be an excellent tool to link visitors with the past, as we consider how our ancestors navigated kitchens rife with mice. Interacting with these kitchen objects showed me how tangible history can be. This experience was a real privilege. I hope when the Judges’ Lodgings opens after lockdown, the public will enjoy it as much as I did.

You can read more about the experiences of students who took part in the pilot project in 2014-15 on our Heritage Placements blog.

We also work with colleagues in the Department of History to support the placements programme for the MA in History.