This was our first task with Slough Museum and we were helping them to sort through some historic items. These items had recently been moved to an empty unit in the Trading Estate so that volunteers could help to put them into some kind of order to allow the Museum to seek accreditation.

Game of Thrones?

With a 6km round run to fit in we swiftly got on with the welcome brief, task overview and safety brief. Run Leader Sut had a musical chairs warm up lined up for everyone! And what do you think happens when 11 adults play this game? Each man to himself! That throne was never going to be won fairly and Antonio and Ciaran showed their competitive streak…

Great to have newbies Sarah and Mabu join us on their first group runs. Mabu spotted us in Wexham last week and got chatting to Jen and Ricky and hey presto! Here he was today with a GG T-shirt en all….

Thank you to Sut Yee and Ciaran for back marking today.

Night at the Museum

The museum houses over 4000 objects and over 8000 photos in its unique collection with an aim to

inspire, engage and educate

The main pods located at The Curve have information from the origins of Slough to Industrious Slough to Slough in the 1930’s…there is plenty to learn about and Slough is certainly no Temple of Doom! But the items we were cataloguing today were part of the mass store of historical pieces that needed sorting in order for the museum to apply for formal accreditation and funding.

On arrival we met our task owner Anna and she gave us an overview of the task at hand and many interesting facts on the history of the Museum.

We had 3 tasks to do

• Photograph filing
• Object checking
• List creation of non-accessioned items

So we got into 2’s or 3’s and started to get it all sorted

Fax’inating technology

Sandy, Kam and Pam were on the non-accessioned items list. Both Pam and Kam came without their glasses today so Sandy had the task of listing the items on the laptop (nice change from the day job…or maybe not!).

Within their treasure trove of finds were a WW2 first aid box, a WW2 wardens jacket, an ancient pair of glasses (there you go Pam and Kam – a pair just your style!), Anti-gas Eyesheilds and work permits dating back to the 1940’s.

Lets find a dark room and see what develops?

Well…it wasn’t quite that type of photography!

But the crew on this part of the task – Antonio, Ciaran and Jen definitely had the most amount of fun! They were tasked to file old photographs into filing sleeves. Some brilliant old photos in this collection. We even found a photo of some runners in Slough Half Marathon from the 1980’s.

I think if we had longer on the task these guys would have looked through each photo! All 8k of them!

A thingamajig and a whatchamacallit

And our remaining team of Naomi, Mabu and Sarah had the task of checking through boxes of items against a spreadsheet of listed items and ticking off what they found.

They found beards, school charters from the 1880’s and a toy Captain Scarlet!

Slough at War

On the 11th of the 11th it only seems fitting to tell you how Slough helped in the war efforts:

Modern Slough was shaped by the two world wars. The First World War directly led to the creation and development of the Slough Trading Estate and this in turn led to the expansion of the town. This meant that the town needed a much larger workforce and became attractive to people from around Britain.

In the Second World War the town took on evacuees from the London Blitz and the Trading Estate turned to the production of items vitally needed for the war effort.

So there you go….

This was a great task – we hope to work with Slough Museum again when they have their volunteer days.

Next week we will be working with another first time task owner – Uniform Express at Home Shop Slough, so it’s a nice short distance with an indoor task. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/slough-group-run-2019-11-18

See you next week