The Tool Shed

The Guildhall Museum has been selected to take part in museumaker, a prestigious, national project involving 16 museums across the country.

museumaker is an ambitious partnership between makers, museums, and visitors, and is supported by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Renaissance in the Regions and Arts Council England.

Outstanding contemporary makers have been chosen to create exceptional new commissions for each partner museum in response to its site and heritage collections. A participatory project, involving the public, is an integral element in each programme.

By exploring the possibilities of creative interchanges between the historical and the contemporary, museumaker offers something special for existing museum visitors, as well as establishing ways to develop new audiences.

Cathy Miles is an English metal smith who uses her skills in working with twisted wire and other materials to create delicate sculptural pieces that offer a refreshing new interpretation of the natural world and familiar everyday objects. Cathy will be using the museum’s 18th century Seaton Tool Chest as a source of inspiration for the Tool Shed – a new temporary and alternative creative zone, structure and display within the museum.

Throughout the period of the commission the interior of the Tool Shed will become an intensive display of tools made in wire, created by participants’ own tools and stories which will be documented through photography and writing. Visitors will be able to join in wire tool making workshops and watch Cathy at work from mid-May until the end of July. The Tool Shed will be on display to visitors until the end of August 2010.