RETOLD: Living Crafts in our Museums

In 2022 we developed banners which explained the project goals and the partners. In 2023 it was time to start working on (one of the) the topics, which is Documenting Houses. The last step - in 2024 - was showing the crafts of RETOLD museums members.

We are developing methods to document crafts in museums. We like to share online what is happening out there as there are some pretty amazing craftspeople showing very cool stuff.

For this purpose, we do some light structuring, asking the same few questions to every craftsperson we meet, like “what are you doing”, and “what is that thing used for”? The questions are very basic, but the answers are fascinating and presented in a way everybody understands.

The great thing is, that once you have some basic info and footage about a craft, this can be re-used and presented in different ways, depending on whom you want to present it to.

The three museums in RETOLD each selected one craftsperson, and we turned their short story into banners about these crafts and why those are so cool. That is one way of presenting these craftspeople and their work.

However, we do not stop here. Another way is through short videos. These are a bit structured, but for example, EXARC member Sally Pointer featured in an early test, which you can see here: https://youtu.be/gckBpG6s62c. This was great work, done by our RETOLD partner Nuwa Ltd when they did fieldwork in Denmark.

The videos and their script are part of the RETOLD app, which we will launch later this year at our conference in the Netherlands.