Newsletter: July 2024
Short Story Competition
On 10th July we had the wonderful privilege of awarding this year’s story competition winner, Ione Knight, with her prizes in a special school assembly. The Museum’s Education Manager, Amy Williams, and Projects Manager, Beth James, travelled to London for the day to make the presentation at Rhodes Avenue Primary School, along with one of our official photographers to help capture the event.
Ione received a framed copy of her winning story, illustrated by artist David Lawrence. It was a lovely occasion with the whole school in attendance. Ione’s prize also included a £5000 voucher for the school to spend with Peters on their school library.
Ione’s parents were also at the school, and it turned out she had kept the whole thing secret from them and only told them when she found out she had won! We were particularly pleased for Ione as she had entered last year and won a runner up prize. The competition is judged blind, so the judges had no idea she had been shortlisted before, making this victory a real testament to Ione’s writing ability.
You can read Ione’s winning story here. Details of next year’s story competition will be on our website soon!
Ashmolean Exhibition
One of the ways in which a museum makes its collections more accessible is by loaning items to other institutions on a temporary or more permanent basis. The Royal Mint Museum currently has a range of material on public display at the Tower of London, the British Museum, the Science Museum and the Bank of Canada Museum in Ottawa. In most cases the numbers involved are modest, but an exhibition has recently opened in Oxford to which the Museum has loaned no less than 40 objects.
Money Talks: Art, Society & Power will open at the Ashmolean Museum in August. It explores how currency and art come together in design and culture to promote, or sometimes to challenge, commonly held views. It features over 100 objects, including work from artists Andy Warhol and Grayson Perry, and from Banksy and Paula Stevens-Hoare, who use money itself as a medium for political commentary and satire. Alongside these artworks there is a range of money, including Roman, Chinese and Islamic coins, Art Nouveau banknotes, as well as artwork and coins for the proposed coinage of Edward VIII. MONEY TALKS: ART, SOCIETY & POWER | Ashmolean Museum
In preparation for this exhibition our Collections Manager, Sarah Tyley, accompanied the Museum’s loaned items to Oxford alongside Tony Mitchell, a long-serving member of Royal Mint staff, who was there to supervise the installation of one of the Museum’s surviving reducing machines. Tony is familiar with these machines, having worked with them during his early days at the Mint in the 1990s.
Tony said ‘It feels really special to be involved in a small piece of minting history, it was a great experience.'
Collections Assistants
Two new Collections Assistants joined the team this month. Kelsie Neak comes to us having already gained some cataloguing experience at the Museum of Cardiff, while Richard Phelps has written extensively about numismatics in a previous role.
The pair have been tasked with cataloguing around 12,000 medals, and after completing the usual induction formalities, they have hit the ground running, gaining valuable insights and experience along the way.
Kelsie – “It’s been fascinating to learn more about the history of the Royal Mint and the objects that are housed here. My time is split between updating records on the database and being hands-on with the collection to make sure everything is labelled and in the right place. It’s been a real privilege to view rarities like the Edward VIII coins, for example, and I’m keen to learn more about coins and medals.”
Richard – “I’ve been fortunate to work with the Royal Mint before and jumped at the chance to be part of an important historical project. A highlight for me so far has been helping to prepare a reducing machine ready for loan to another museum. I’m looking forward to seeing it on display restored to its former glory.”