There aren’t many pretty pictures to accompany this post, mainly because my work has been far from visual over the last couple of months. The focus of my research has shifted from interacting with ‘things’ to interacting with people; interviewing people or, to put it in its simplest form, talking to people.

I’ve been talking to past and present staff at Walsall Museum about their experiences of the Hodson Shop Collection. My approach has been partly that of an oral historian and partly that of a particularly nosy ethnographer!

My aims have been:

• To establish the story of the collection, from the point of discovery to the present day, according to the people who have worked with it
• To chart how changes in museum spaces have effected the collection, in terms of both display and storage
• To discover how museum professionals understand and interpret the collection on personal and professional levels

The final aim is one that I still struggle to pin down, but I’m going to have a go. Apologies as I know how vague and unrefined this is:

I want to unpick the relationships between people and the items within the collection. This could be as simple as an individual’s favourite item and the reasons behind it or as complex as how the collection has altered or otherwise impacted on an individual’s life and/or career.

Before embarking on the research, I read plenty of intimidating tomes about conducting interviews. Phrases like ‘building rapport’ and ‘power dynamics’ rang in my ears and, quite frankly, terrified me. But it was only when I sat down with my first interviewee, cups of tea in hand, that it hit me: there’s nothing scary about having a chat. There are some out there who might be rankled by my unsophisticated choice of word here but I’m standing by it.

I have also discovered that it sometimes better for the interviewee if interview is referred to as a ‘chat’. It is a simple shift in language that can completely change an individual’s response. A friendly conversation about something they have a deep interest in is much more appealing than an ‘in-depth interview’. It can be tricky to balance this friendly informality with the necessary filling in of consent forms and explanations of the project and how recordings will be used, but it isn’t impossible.

I’ve been recording interviews on my LiveScribe (it is a pen with a audio recorder built in, amongst other James Bond-style features – pictured above). My hope was that the pen would be far less invasive than a conventional recording device plonked on the desk, I hoped it would be almost an “invisible recorder”. Without delving into a full review, it has been successful to a point, though the LiveScribe has a few frustrating irks such as a tendency to pick up the sound of the pen nib making contact with the page. I also had to angle the pen towards the speaker, making for some artificial holding positions and postures.

The next step is to transcribe and sort my data. Notes made during the interviews and memories already indicate some clear themes emerging. I’m excited to see what close analysis of the text will reveal whilst equally nervous about what will have been lost in the jump from sound to text.

Throughout this whole process, I’ve found Paul Thompson’s The Voice of the Past to be invaluable. It may be 35 years old and talk about cassette recorders as the height of technological sophistication but the approach he outlines is wise and straightforward. The art of talking to people is timeless.

Massive thanks to everyone who has been involved in the interviews/chats so far! Now for the fun part: transcription.