Our Green Stories Tours
Tuesdays (20 Feb, 19 Mar, 16 Apr) 11:30 - 12:30
Curator of MERL Collections, Dr Ollie Douglas, will be joined by a different specialist for each of these tours. Together they will take visitors on a short conversational trip through the galleries, exploring our collections, and sharing Green Stories about environment, climate action, social justice, and the life and future of the planet.
Each tour will last about 45 minutes and will culminate in a pop-up display or an opportunity to peek behind the scenes. At the end of the session there’ll be a chance to ask questions and to chat with Ollie and his guest.
TOUR DATES
20th February - Ollie will be joined by Associate Professor of Language and Migration Dr Tony Capstick. Tony has been working with The MERL and with Dr Alex Arnall to explore how ‘linguistic landscapes’ (the study of how texts are displayed, read, and understood in a particular space) might help interpret collections and engage audiences in environmental ideas. With his help, we hope to support our visitors in thinking about ‘more-than-human’ ways of understanding the world. By joining this tour, you will be helping Tony and Alex to shape their research as it develops.
19th March - Ollie will be taking us on a solo tour (well, hopefully many of you will also be joining him, so he won’t be all alone!). He’ll be using the galleries as a backdrop to explorations of colonial legacies, questions of land access, and some of the complex clashes between indigenous rights and the drive to protect nature. He’ll also share details of a trip he took last summer to meet with Maasai community leaders in Kenya and Tanzania, and to visit to a farm in West Kilimanjaro with links to The MERL.
16th April - Ollie will be joined by Domonique Davies (Environmental Humanities PhD Researcher at the University of Reading) for an exploration of the role of poetry, both in The MERL galleries and as a tool to help combat environmental harms and climate breakdown. Domonique is interested in creative and culture-based approaches to the prevention of ecological crisis and will share her research journey, experiences of community work, and how these connect to The MERL’s themes and collections. The tour will finish with a brief opportunity to try your hand at writing your own eco poetry.
These events are convened as part of the Our Green Stories environmental campaign by Museums Partnership Reading.
