The Oxford Story Museum

Hello and welcome to MythMakers, the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. And today I'm delighted to say I have a special guest from the city of Oxford itself and that is Caroline Jones and Caroline runs the story museum right in the heart of our city. So hello Caroline. Hello Julia, nice to see you. Now I thought everyone would be interested to hear from Caroline because she presides over a fantastic, relatively new museum that I hope that people coming to Oxford will definitely put on the agenda to come and visit. But Caroline, before we talk about the museum itself, maybe we can hear a little bit about you and your journey to heading up this museum and your relationship with books. Pleasure. So whilst I'm maternity leave with my second child, so I'm going back seven years now, I was walking through the street to Oxford and as is often the way with Oxford, I came upon these big gates, big wooden doors, gates, which unusually for Oxford was slightly a jar. Oxford is a place with lots of high walls and closed gates and as you're very lucky and you can visit one of these places, every other Tuesday at 9.30 for five minutes. But on this occasion, the gate was a jar and I pushed it open and I found myself in a courtyard and intrigued as to what the building was. I did a bit of research and discovered it was a there was a project underway to build in this place, the world's first museum stories, which I found such a completely compelling and visionary idea that I offered my services. I must have been slightly sleep deprived because of the small child. I said, why don't I come and help you my background is in fundraising, I spent 20 years working in producing theater and particularly raising money for buildings, the raw Shakespeare company in Stratford, the roundhouse in London, the young, also in London. So can I become part of your project, your vision. So that was seven years ago and eight years later, somehow in 2021, I'm now museum director and CEO, it's been an incredible journey, we have successfully created the world's first story museum for children and families in the heart of Oxford as you say. Yes, I've popped in many times over the years, seeing it from its sort of very bearable packing case stage because it was originally a telephone exchange, wasn't it? So the site itself being in the middle of Oxford, unsurprisingly, it's got a rich history dating back to the medieval, medieval times and and scribes sitting in what we believe were the sellers. There's some really interesting connections to the site itself, but we've had it, the charities had it since about 2010, 11 and it's taken 10 years to get us through a sort of master planning stage and we delivered the capital project in stages we were advised early on to just do it literally in chapters like a book. So just open your first chapter and let people read it and see what they think. And so the period of redevelopment that we've just completed between 2018 and 2020, what to bring the building into full use. So all 2,000 square meters are now fit for purpose as galleries, we have a theatre, we have learning studios, play spaces. It's a huge site in the middle of Oxford that children and families can come and immerse themselves in stories. And it's not just dedicated to stories that originate in Oxford, of course, but Oxford itself does have a very rich, almost unrivaled tradition of storytelling here. What's the relationship between what you can see in museum and the Oxford writers that we all know of? Well, so where else to build a museum of stories? Oxford is its natural home, being a city of stories. So in fact, like all museums, we have a collection and our collection is largely an intangible one. So we have the 1,000 and 1 stories collection. And so we have a collecting policy that helps us to decide ourselves and in fact our children and family visitors who help us decide what stories go in our collection. And one of the criteria is about relationship to Oxford. So the stories, fortunately for us, it's difficult to find a story that doesn't have some loose tangential connection to Oxford because so many writers have passed through the city and so many fictional characters started and spent some time in the city. So it's a beautifully rich resource for us. So you can find stories very cleverly and closely associated with Oxford in our museum, as well as from around the world. So perhaps you could just do an imaginary walkthrough once you arrive in the courtyard. What are your choices when you are? That's my favorite question in the imaginary walkthrough. So you push those big wooden doors that I described and you enter into a courtyard. And as a visitor, and if you're a typical visitor to the museum, you're probably a family, probably with children sort of from early years through to teenage, early teenage years. And at that point, you can do one of four things. You can go to our galleries, which takes you on a journey through stories. So you start in our whispering wood. You will discover the roots of oral stories pun intended and you have stories whispered in your ears. You move through the trees in our wood. You then move to our childhood library where you find stories that have moved to page and screen and you can step into story worlds that we've created. In some cases, very familiar moments from stories that most people know. And in other cases, stories that we've very deliberately chosen because maybe not so many people know them, but we think they bring a real, real importance to the display into the interpretation. You can visit our treasure chamber, which is our temporary exhibition space, which has sort of six to eight monthly rotation of temporary exhibitions, also very much rooted in our 2001 story collection that I mentioned. So you can move through those galleries at your own pace. And your second choice is to go to our small worlds, which is a space, especially for very young children. So this is a space that really celebrates picture books. And you will engage in a session that's a relatively structured session, bookended with songs and storytelling with our storyguides, our fabulous storyguides. But as the adults care with your young child, you're encouraged to take the child around space and allow them to play in the various little story worlds that they'll find there. But we find that adult carers, whether they're, you know, professional parents, the four or five children, or a first-time parent, or grandparent, or an nursery worker, adults also need almost permission to play, and we do a lot of work to encourage adults to learn how to play through story and how to connect with their child over that precious story time that they can share together. So that's option two, option three, you can go to our city of stories, and that's a 25 minute long film that's about the literary, the rich literary heritage of Oxford. And many fantasy writers and stories are presented through that short film. Well, your fourth option is to go to our theatre. We have a hundred-seek theatre called The Woodshed, and it's so called because the walls happen to be lined with doors that we've, that we've wumbled, we've discovered them in various bits. They've dropped off bits of the university, or we found them in, in stately homes. They don't need them anymore. Because wood is beautiful, it's beautiful to look at it, it adds a lovely warm colour and texture to the room, but acoustically it's super helpful. So for a theatre that is predominantly around storytelling, all all storytelling and performances for very small children, the wood serves our purpose beautifully. And there's definitely not something nasty in our woodshed, there's something exciting and imaginative always. Perhaps you just explain the word one board to... Oh, one. The one board is here. I do that. So the wumbles are a strange tribe of small creatures who live on Wimbledon Common and who collect rubbish. So they were environmentally conscious and sustainable way before it's fashionable. They collect rubbish and they used to reuse and upcycle it. So the story museum has a longstanding aesthetic really to reuse and upcycle bits of furniture. We've taken this historical site and we've completely given it another life, so we've even reused our building. So that's very much at the heart of what we do. So just that explain it. Yeah, we should add in, they are fictional. Oh, for people to start going on to Wimbledon Common. Well, we're talking with people who like fantasy. One was there as a real as you want them to be. They began life in a story. There is a wonderful song that goes with it too, which I remember fondly from my childhood. And just to check, you don't have to have a child in tow if you're visiting Oxford. Absolutely not. So when I say you're probably a family with children aged between about three and fifteen, you don't have to be. And indeed, we run a very successful monthly storytelling club with Crick Crack, who are one of the UK's most preeminent storytelling networks. And they are fairytales, especially for grownups. There might be the occasional rude word and gesture. So children are not allowed in our adults to retelling events. And I can attest as an extremely good cafe as well, which I think, you know, you should always mention that because. Lovely cafe. Fabulous combination. Yeah, absolutely. So our charity at the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. We're particularly interested in the inklings and in that we've got both Tolkien and CS Lewis, famous for Narnia and Middle Earth. I remember seeing you have a through the wardrobe exhibition room, don't you, which is a wonderful space for people to capture that moment of pushing through the wardrobe. Absolutely. So one of the things we do, I've mentioned these story worlds. So we're very much about creating an immersive environment or a narrative environment is another way of describing it. Into which a person can step and immediately find themselves in a moment in a story. And that's quite challenging because we can't assume and we mustn't assume that the person coming through the wardrobe or down the rabbit hole knows the story because that's an assumed knowledge. So we have to find a moment which is both familiar and universal. So if you don't know the story, you're still going to experience something really special in that moment. And the story museum has been running pop-up exhibitions on site for a number of years. So prior to redeveloping and completing the museum as I described to you, we had various pop-up temporary exhibitions. And one of them included possibly inevitably for a museum of stories of wardrobe door, which sat quite discreetly almost unnoticeable at the end of a long gallery. Children are pretty inquisitive. They'll always open the wardrobe door. They're not going to walk past the door without trying it. So they would open the door and they would step into the wardrobe and they would feel the tickle of the fur coats on their nose. And not least because it's an old building and really leaky and quite cold, they would step through the fur coats and lobe in a cold snowy environment. So we had the white witches slay and we had trees and beautiful actual trees that we had installed and snow that felt cold to touch. And if you climbed into the slay, you would find a little box of Turkish delight and you might even be bold enough to take a piece of Turkish delight and enjoy it. And then if you listened, you would hear the wind in the trees and a cave you would hear extract of the story being told to you. We did that in our previous museum. We couldn't not then recreate something similar in our permanent office. So we do in our enchanted library. We do indeed have a wardrobe door. And now that COVID restrictions are more or less gone or at least reduced, we can descend the fur coat. So visitors have to come through the fur coats and step into the snowy environment. And there's a rather lovely digital interaction. So you can hear Mr. Tumnus as he carries it and you can see the parcels tumbling into the snow by use of magic, otherwise known as digital projection. And it's a rather special moment and it is one of my favorite things to hear children visitors pushing open the door and finding themselves in the snowy landscape. It's lovely. And are children still as intrigued by the worlds of Tolkien and Lewis as previous generations? Do they still work as stories? They absolutely work as stories. Children have a natural affinity with fantasy, the lines between reality and imagination are so thinly placed with them. So they move quite fluidly between their imaginative worlds, their own interior imagination or worlds that are created for them. They completely immerse themselves and enter this world and believe it to be true, it's amazing the extent to which adults as well. We suspend our disbelief just for a moment and you know that you're standing in a museum on some level. And you're also prepared to just go with the story, which is that you're about to encounter Mr. Tumnus as he comes around the corner with his parcels. I know my own children, so my children are 8 and 11 and they have not yet read the poems. They feel like big, hefty, weighty books for small children to tackle. But they know the story almost intimately through their experiences in the museum, through of course watching them on film, which is quite often the way children will encounter these stories to start with, whether they then reverse into the books is an interesting question. I know my children prefer things that are fantastical can sometimes be a bit scary because the rules of life that you rely on and as a child you possibly come to trust and to need as a form of security are all gone. So my 11 year old I know finds it much easier to read a scary book than watch a scary film because she'll just put the book down and she'll step out of the world somehow whereas a film somehow seems to create it's too complete. So it's it's almost too much it could be too overwhelming whereas with a book she's in control a little bit more about the extent to which she moves into that space and then backs out of the space. Yes, I find intriguing there's that brilliant Neil Geiman quote isn't there is something along the lines of I'm slightly miss quoting here that fancy doesn't teach us that dragons don't exist but that dragons can be overcome. So the idea is that you can actually take them on which prepares you way for the battles of real life that's brilliant brilliant. Yes, we should we have lots of Neil Geiman quotes but not that one. So you've touched on Caroline on the idea of many children come at these things via film. How do you do are you mainly about books or do you also have a place for film in your. So we deal in stories in all forms so our one thousand and one collection that I mentioned has stories in a range of form starting with oral the oral tradition moving through page and stage and indeed screen so so we do have a film category. But what we really like is when a story has materialized in multiple forms because that that suggests that they are enduring that they that they have endured such that people decide to recreate or reimagine stories in different forms. So you know it is of course true that many children encounter stories first through film and TV and indeed computer the computer narratives. Don't get me started on books that start as films and end up as books I can't I just I don't allow I'm terribly. The line for you just it's not it just doesn't work that because at the museum we are often heard to say we always start with a story because in our experience where they were creating a huge outdoor participatory event for hundreds of people whether we're creating a new immersive exhibition whether we're creating a new Christmas show. You start with a story you give your experience a an integrity you give it a call from from inside out if you somehow start with an extrapolation of a story and reverse into it it just doesn't it doesn't satisfy it never feels to me quite good enough it feels too much like a franchise that's just extending itself into a different form and I disapprove such things. I mean that is one of the pleasures if children have started the wrong way round and they've started with the film and then go to the book at least when you get the book you get so much more you get absolutely so just thinking of Lord of the rings there so much they couldn't put in our eyes would still be sitting in the cinema. So when you do go back to it things don't happen in quite the same way so you've got a whole new set of characters things are all adjusted and you get a much a different completely different and valid experience so maybe your kids will you know overcome overcome it. I tell you what pick up the book something we learn early the museum is that there are some stories that feel familiar even if you if you might not name them by which I mean the Disney franchise frozen this is a little known film involving some princesses and some ice some years ago. Well it was of course a massive phenomenon particularly for young girls as it happened so when at the museum we held a frozen weekend they all came along in their branded costumes allow the Disney film. They ended up yes singing along to the film which they loved but also hearing an oral telling of the snow queen and experiencing different versions of that story as it had traveled from its traditional oral roots I think in Germany I think that's correct many thousands of years ago and up to the Disney version of the same story and we quite often play with that. You know the spectrum of a story where it started where it ended up how something like Cinderella can almost spontaneously spring up in all form in three different places at once and almost have the same story backbone which is a fascinating phenomenon and and just to share some of that with our visitors is a real pleasure and hopefully one of the things we try and do is is just offer visitors are jumping off point. Ask them questions provoke curiosity that they then can go away and continue thinking about in their own time we love introducing visitors to new stories and then they continue that story once they leave the museum that's that's our ideal. I think I must be one of the very few people in the world who's actually never watched frozen I had children at the wrong age from that they were already grown up and way beyond that when it came out and so I'm a I finally you know I heard about this song that was everywhere. There's a big there's a big song I mean there is access to the film at least I know yes as you see like you were saying you feel you know because so much has been. Yeah yeah but I haven't actually sat down and I'm not so bad I'm not a massive proponent of particularly Disney princesses as a as a category of story character but actually Elsa from that film is she's she's on the way to becoming a slightly more liberated. Self-fulfilling female character and then actually over subsequent years they've got even better at ensuring their female characters are not simply princesses that need rescuing which I appreciate very much. I love I absolutely adore the snow queen as a story. So perhaps I should give it a chance maybe maybe so yeah that's that's what you might find in the museum when it comes to fantasy and much else besides so obviously Oxford is a place of living all this as well as all those who passed before and I know as an also living in the city myself that many of us come and go in the doing events at the museum and having partnership but obviously you we've got some big names and you know in terms of the big five. Of the Safari world hanging around Oxford of whom Philip Paulman is a very notable one. Yeah and do you have much about his fantasy world the Lyra world absolutely well Philip is actually it's he's a patron of the museum and a huge supporter and in again in the enchanted library somewhere in between the Alice space and the Narnia space and the and various other spaces. We have a his dark materials space so we we we have a moment from the subtle knife which is when Lyra and the young boy will are given will will specifically is given the knife and and so we've recreated again using quite a digital technology that's interesting as I've talked about two spaces both of which use digital technology but actually that's unusual. We tend to use digital technology to to enchant and enhance experience rather than to be the sole mechanism of the experience so but in this particular instance there's projection and and audio and it's very atmospheric and it's down a dark stony corridor so you have to be quite a brave. Five or six year old to venture down that corridor and see what's at the end of it and we also have the only leaf your matter that exists in the world as far as we know on display in our library it's beautiful and so intricate and it really works is a there's a film of Philip demonstrating how you can. Turn the dials and watch the symbols move around it's it's really beautiful. Oh wow I think I did see that but I haven't seen the film of Philip actually manipulating it yeah yeah it's in there in the same space yeah. And I suppose we should also touch on we're living through time changing times and a lot of the stories we've been talking about refer to a western tradition. You know with white protagonists and what are you doing to diversify Anna you're doing a lot but what do you think I am how people can relate to story. It's a really important question Julia so I already mentioned the fact that oral stories are part of our collection and in fact we have a whole gallery dedicated to the oral tradition and and by virtue of starting our story journey there we're drawing on the widest range of tradition from different cultures and drawings. Different cultural traditions so so that's our starting point and then we we work hard to make sure that the displays the interpretation that's available to visitors are representative of the communities that live with and around us in Justin Oxford is a is a hugely diverse place. And then of course out into the rest of the country we want to make sure that every child that comes to the museum can see themselves somewhere in in the representation of the stories that we that we share with them. We also have a very active outreach and targeted project program that's working with particular communities within Oxford and we're working hard to start collecting their traditional stories so whether it be nursery rhymes or all tales that they remember from wherever they've come from. And so that that work is ensuring that the basis from which we tell our stories is as rich and as representative as it can be. It is also true that when you go to the enchanted library there is a predominance of a certain type of author because the because the fantasy tradition you know as you say the big five. They are who they are the stories are as significant as they are because they hugely successful so we'd be doing them and the fantasy traditional disservice if we didn't Julie celebrate and and and showcase that work. As long as that we're balancing that with the newer stories and the newer authors and and fictional characters that are that are arriving on the scene every day so it's a so it's a content we have to be continually vigilant to make sure that what the visitor encounters is going to resonate. To be relevant to them. Thank you that's been absolutely fascinating and maybe people listening to this all around the world will be thinking we could do one of those in our backyard so obviously story is globally significant with its own little hotspots in other places that be wonderful to think of lots of sister organizations popping up. Finally enough we've had two emails randomly in the last week one from a person in Lancashire and another one from person Dagenham both saying can can you tell us how you've done it because we'd quite like to do. What you've done in our communities and I am so excited to talk to them and just try and think a bit about how they could create a similar sort of environment in in their own communities that is absolutely fantastic. Well you may get swamped with emails now. So to finish off we always have a section in the myth makers podcast where we think of all the fantasy worlds that we know be it in a book or a film or play and we think where would be the best place to go for something so it might be where is the best place to go to drink in a tabern or visit a library. In your honor I thought we would have where is the best place in all the fantasy worlds to go to visit a museum. I wonder if you have any that you can think of so that the I'm in either it but some story journey to the river see there is a museum that the children encounter and the curator of the museum is a rather wonderful. Gentleman who's a collector of natural history and I was always rather thrilled that the prospect of this museum in a in a parent sort of backwater in in the Amazonian rainforest I think it is isn't it so so there's a museum in a book that I was always very very drawn to and intrigued by. And ever it's an also a local lady absolutely absolutely so so so so very much a focus for the museum and and I suppose if I was to create a museum somewhere I don't think one exists I sort of can't believe there isn't a museum in the disc world series i'm sure there is I haven't encountered one yet but there are many many books and I think I just probably haven't found it but I think I'd like to curate a museum in the disc world. Imagine them lampooning it exactly that world exactly but that's why that's why it would be fun I think for me I thought of two things one thing is I've actually written a whole fantasy book set in a sort of Victorian. And a huge museum which represents the history of science so it's it further back in the museum you go the older the scientific theories become and it also sort of breaks down and becomes doors are closed off and it the space represents a kind of history and I loved thinking that up and inventing a museum which is loosely based on places like the natural history museum in London and the one here in Oxford. So that I've already sort of thought about this but I've also just read Piranese which is the thank you Susanna. This does come out which would you say that's a museum it's a kind of museum it's a place of statues in empty halls it felt like a vast museum to me sort of ideas and if you're an adult and looking for a really interesting fantasy read that has this museum quality I would highly recommend that book. That's fantastic I just but I've just gifted that to a colleague at the museum because I know she's a fan of Susanna Clark having let me the Jonathan I'm going to get it the wrong way around Jonathan Strange and Dr. Nora is that right. Which also has the talking statues of course in the church that has the sculptures and statues that just start shouting and singing which I'd rather enjoy. So thank you very much Caroline and we'll be putting a link to the fantastic website that the story museum has in the show notes so you can have a look and hopefully put it on your agenda when you actually get to come to Oxford itself so thank you and goodbye. Thanks for listening to MythMakers Podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy visit Oxford Center for Fantasy dot org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses in person stays in Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide. you