notice nature feel joy

Crawling, jumping, swimming and fluttering... our natural history collection has found its way to its new home. This blog documents the journey we took with hundreds of visitors, volunteers and partners to coproduce the gallery. Follow the project on Twitter @DMNature #DMNature.

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*yawn* Hello DMNature friends, we’ve had a busy time with the DMNature project and our beautiful co-produced Nature Gallery, notice nature feel joy at the Museum and Art Gallery. We’ve reached a point where the gallery is humming with excitement and intrigue and the co-production team are beginning new adventures with the next project at the Museum and Art Gallery. If you’re new to this space, please do explore this blog to see how notice nature feel joy, developed, was built and enjoyed by our visitors, volunteers and staff. We’d be delighted to see you in the gallery itself too – go to the Derby Museums website to find out more.

Although we’re a little late to hibernate properly like our dormouse friends, this post is to share that this blog and our Twitter feed will go into hibernation. A huge thank you to those of you who were part of the project and if you wish to keep in touch with Derby Museums, please contact us via the platforms listed below. *yawn* time for some sleep now. Twitter Facebook

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We love to offer our collection as a creative resource and were delighted that writers from Hello Hubmarine were up for a challenge. You can hear the tales that they constructed here, read them in the gallery or purchase a little book of stories from our museum shop. Each tale profiles a creature or two from our collection, drop in to see who inspired this super creative group of writers.

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If you are in the gallery at1.30pm you will hear a beautiful soundscape swirling around the space. Derby composer, Richard Birkin worked with our visitors to collect sounds of nature and used these to compose an amazing piece of original music. ‘Aves’ was inspired by a 1949 recording of a nightingale singing in Derbyshire and this can be heard nestled in the middle of the piece. 

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We opened late for the national ‘Museums at Night’ event with a programme of talks and activities. A highlight of the evening was a taxidermy demonstration where Jazmine Miles-Long, one of our commissioned creatives for 'notice nature feel joy’ shared the process, ethics and inspirations that inform and guide her practice.

Tickets sold out and it was great to see our developing 'Inspired by Nature’ space full of interested and engaged visitors. Great cocktails too!

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It's tricky to allow opportunities to touch historic taxidermy specimens so we commissioned a handsome fox from ethical taxidermist, Jazmine Miles-Long. This beautiful creature was a road causality and is proving to be a great source of inspiration for our visitors. The 'reflect and respond' area is filling up with some great foxy portraits too, visitors appear to have named him Freddy! The fox is positioned in a prime sightline and very few people pass without giving him a pat or having a few words with him. Part of our approach in the gallery was to engage people's heads, hearts and hands. We think Freddy is doing all three.

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All smiles in a moment of calm at the launch night. Makers, volunteers, partners and colleagues. We've been immersed in this project for ten months and can still make each other smile!

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So we wondered how to get you thinking about teeth….by playing of course. Our visionect screen is perfect for displaying your teeth selfies.

Our maker partner, Graeme Smith, created these brilliant yet disgusting teeth masks that work a treat.

Placed with the skulls and skeletons our collection of teeth is fascinating, marginally more so than the brilliant photographs you’ve been tweeting from the gallery.

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Some shots of our completed gallery, moments before the launch event began. The mounting excitement is almost tangible as the empty space is about to be 'ignited' by our guests. The space is arranged broadly into zones that allowed us to explore and present all of the themes and specimens that you asked for. Rocks and minerals, fossils, insects, birds, mammals, shells and sea creatures and the amazing curiosities in jars. All of these beautiful birch ply fixtures were designed and made in house with our volunteers and partners

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Our launch night was the best fun ever. Brilliant to see so many people engaging with our collection, exploring and testing out the bespoke interpretive tools. Over 300 guests joined us to hear speeches by Tony Butler, Andrea Hadley-Johnson, Alison Martin and Michaela Strachan and enjoy the Mojitos! The message was loud and clear, noticing nature increases the desire to learn about, protect and respond to nature. Connecting with nature improves health and wellbeing

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Our fabulous work placement student Meghan has been out and about in Derby noticing nature. Please share your own photographs with us, they're always inspiring

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Some of our simple, playful tools coproduced with 'super nature volunteer' and commissioned maker Graeme Smith. Look through masks that distort and change what you see, magnifiers and beautiful elegant hooks. All informed by our early project lab experiments with visitors and volunteers and handmade in our Silk Mill workshop, we're so lucky to have that resource. Come and have a play with them in the gallery and share your feedback, we'd love to hear what you think.

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Alex Hyde taking some amazing close ups of our selected insects. A very talented photographer who embraced our experimental approach to capture some stunning images of the entomology collection. Alex took the photographs in a public space to enable questions from visitors and colleagues to inform the process. We've used the images in our gallery guide, for marketing, retail and ..... soon to come, a coproduced trail for the gallery.

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Preparing some amazing skulls and skeletons to be displayed on our new, stark white boards. Lots of cleaning, documenting and draft layouts to go before we get to the exciting part.

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Anna Stone and Chris Pickup from Lincoln University are our conservators in residence. We're learning such a lot from them and their box of tricks! 

Our creatures are enjoying the makeover and are in a much better state to share with our visitors. Anna and Chris have passed on basic skills to other members of the team and have left the process ''more open minded'' about the possibilities to using taxidermy creatively in a museum context.

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The Graphic Design students sharing their ideas, they had thirty minutes and a table of rough and ready materials to whip something creative up. We started at the Silk Mill and moved to the new nature space to follow up on the initial ideas. Love how they embraced the race to produce something at speed, working instinctively with the materiality of the building 

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Andrea H-J and Tim Shore setting forty two fantastic Graphic design students from Derby University up for some fun! The students are collaborating with us to design an esoteric interpretive tool. Something playful to get our visitors thinking differently about the natural history specimens  

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Our insects have come a loooong way since the start of the project in May. After the 'long list' selection, the de-selection and a spell in the freezer we have the specimens that you most wanted to see all in one place. Rose and Karim are taking the beetles carefully from their temporary drawer and pinning them into our beautiful new case