By Emily Forster, Archivist
Exhibitions don’t just come out of nothing. An idea comes to mind, it is discussed, logistics are worked out, and then the planning begins. Numerous sessions occur to work out what story you want to tell, which documents will tell that story, and how many will actually fit in the cases.
During this process, you will come across several records that need some work done on them, whether this be physical repairs (conservation), or perhaps photographic manipulation to enhance an otherwise flat or damaged picture, or you might find an interesting audio recording that cannot be played in its entirety, so requires clipping.
Two colleagues and I followed these processes during the creation of our latest exhibition, Fallen: The Clewer House of Mercy, and I’m going to walk you through what we did.
Conservation
Jane, our preservation assistant, works primarily with physical documents. She performs both preservation and conservation treatments to ensure our records are physically stable so they will survive for as long as possible.
The main principles of conservation have changed over the years and are likely to change in the future. Conservation, at its foundation, is guided by the ethics that anything that is done to a document must be reversible, and when possible, that “like for like” materials be used.
Jane performed many acts of “magic” guided by science and conservation techniques to stabilise the documents featured in our exhibition. See some of the examples below.
This booklet (D/EX1675/1/30/5) had, through the years become creased quite considerably and torn along the folds and edges. This has not really affected its usability, however when shown in an exhibition, you certainly want your items to look their best. Therefore, Jane very carefully “flattened” this booklet and repaired it, making it look more presentable and ready to go on show.
The next item she treated was D/EX1675/1/19/1, which includes Mother Harriet’s daily list of prayers, stating who to pray for and what to pray for them. The two pages that had been attached together using sticky tape had detached. Jane was able to re-attach them using Japanese tissue, and make it look as if nothing had ever happened. She also supported the back of the pages so they can be folded safely.
Photography
Lucie is our reprographics assistant, and while Jane makes magic using science and conservation techniques, Lucie makes magic in photographic restoration and colourisation. We had various photographs we wished to use in the exhibition, but due to their age and the time of being taken, were faded, dull, black and white, or had even been vandalised.
Perhaps my favourite transformation was the colourisation Lucie did to this image of some schoolgirls during their sitar class (D/EX1675/31/5/18). The original photograph is certainly beautiful, but we wondered what their sari’s may have looked like. Lucie was able to colourise this photograph, and show the beautiful blues, whites, and greens of the girls’ outfits. It also made much clearer what a lovely sunny day it was, with the blue sky in the background, and the lush greenery surrounding them.
Lucie also worked on the photograph that became our title picture (D/EX1675/2/11/50). It features 5 women from the House of Mercy, Clewer. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly who they are, nor why one is wearing different clothing to the others. We speculate she may have decided to stay on and become a Magdelene, while the remaining 4 were penitents.
The original photograph is miniscule, far too small to be easily seen within a large display case. So, Lucie was able to blow it up to a larger size, and sharpen it considerably, meaning we could more easily see the faces of the women whose story we hoped to tell. They appear to be laughing and smiling together, and it is lovely to see.
Audio clips
As for my part, I worked on splicing clips from our oral history recording of Sister Moira (D/EX1675/1/30/56/1), who was the first Magdelene ever to be accepted into the main Community, and made a Sister.
Sister Moira’s story is fascinating, and I would certainly encourage all our exhibition goers and those interested in the Houses of Mercy of the Community of St John the Baptist to listen to it (found on our digital repository) however it being over an hour and a half long meant it was not the right length to be featured in our exhibition.
So, I first set about listening to the whole recording, and noting down changes in topic, and notable sections that might be interesting for our audience to hear. After this, I used the programme Audacity to load up the full recording and begin creating clips.
Some of these clips needed a little extra work, as they would have pauses as Sister Moira lost her place in what she was reading, stumbled over her words, or occasionally had audio issues, such as tapping sounds being heard, not made by Moira but may have been caused by damage to the cassette tape that the recording was originally made on. These had to be shaved out, and with a bit of fine tuning I had created several clips that might be used.
My colleague Lisa and I, who curated this exhibition, diligently listened to the final products, and culled them down further, choosing a final selection of 9 clips to be used within the exhibition. They describe a typical morning in the House of Mercy, her work in the laundry, and recounts how she was upset to be there at first but came to like the work quite quickly and wanted to stay, to her aunts’ chagrin. She tells of how she became a Magdelene, and how she was made a full Sister of the Community of Saint John the Baptist.
All of these elements worked in tandem with other aspects of the process, such as choosing the items that will best tell our story and creating boards and timelines to further illustrate the lives of the women of the House of Mercy. After about a year of work, the exhibition was ready to be installed on 24 March 2026, and it is running until 26 June 2026.