Attendant's View Blog and Cartoons

Happy Birthday to us

19/8/2020

It's August, and this year, amazingly, Attendant's View is ten.
Yes, these ramblings have been going for a decade now, so thanks for beling along for the journey!

To celebrate, I'm posting a cartoon a day on social media throughout August, starting from the first one published here, and moving through in order. Once we hit the end of August, I'll be doing Throwback Thursdays.

Of course, there were posts which weren't cartoons, but were written observations, more serious reviews or opinions etc, so feel free to skip through the archives and have a look for yourself!

If you want to come and join on social media (where you'll see a lot more casual shares and posts about news etc than here) just follow the links and like the pages.

It'd be great to see you there!

Delivery Service

4/7/2020

Your toilets matter more than ever as Lockdown Loosens

25/6/2020

Toilets.
Not very exciting, eh?

They really matter to your visitors if you work at almost any venue open to the public, (you probably know this) and it can be surprisingly easy to overlook them as a factor in visitor satisfaction. With Covid-19, cleanliness and shared spaces are now even more of a concern, and that means your toilets really matter more than ever.

There's some very interesting and useful information in this Youtube video about what will help visitors feel confident and comfortable in visiting your site when it reopens after lockdown. Graphs, and data, and everything! Have a gander, and perhaps pass it to those making the decisions, if it's not yourself.

Assume the position

5/6/2020

First Post in quite a few months.
They have been very strange months.

This was actually drawn a while ago having just visited a major exhibition where I assume that the label heights were intended to be accessible for all? Or something? But ended up so low down almost everyone took a hunched position of some kind, and then crabbed their way along the packed lines.

Even if you could peep at an object between people, good luck trying to see any written interpretation about it...

The woad to Mary Rose, via MERL. AKA daft museum tweets.

13/3/2020

Some parts of the internet are just awful, little breeding pits for spite and horror. But then, you find those gems, those people or accounts who are just smart, supportive, informative, or plain old silly.

You may know of the Museum of English Rural Life as the twitter account where the staff, being allowed to have some fun, ended up with an absolute unit of a sheep go viral. It was unusual to say the least. The Mary Rose twitter people are also allowed some leeway for levity, bringing personality to their account. Attendant's VIew, urm, does what it likes, there's no managerial oversight here, just me spouting nonsense and ocassinally getting insenced at things.

Fine folks, let me take you on a journey with The Mary Rose...

https://twitter.com/TheMERL/status/1237022027040595969

A quick update - I am still alive!

9/3/2020

I'm not gone, just kind of busy, and also a bit demotivated... which is why the website has been without a new blog since the end of January, and I'm struggling to draw cartoons.

Because "They're cutting our funding again/the trustees are arguing with the council/staff have had to go on strike to be heard." are just not things I want to put to paper. Perhaps I really should (you folks have previously said very much yes to my creating cartoons about the crap side of things, such as this one here)

I may dig into my stash of amusing and adorable and positive things, and get some warm and fuzzy cartoons done - Heck, a bit of cheer can't hurt to remind us why we all do what we do. 🌈

As ever, a reminder that you can drop me your real life incidents by message here, or on social media and I will keep things confidential, and change as many details as you think appropriate in any cartoons drawn. (or flat out draw you as you in that situation, if you want me to!)

Three museum blogs to follow for 2020

22/1/2020

I you fancy some extra food for thought in 2020, I have three blogs and peeps for you heritage and museum bods to give a follow, and get some fantastic content popped right to your inboxes.

My first bit of advice is to get signed up to Museum 2.0. When this excellent blog appears into my email it's always worth a read. It sometimes challenges my preconceptions, often asks questions which I can apply to myself, my work or venue, and is a very engaging site, taking the discussion to twitter, and bringing in quotes from folks chatting on there.

http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/

Tutankamun at the Saachi Gallery: A Live Tweeted Review.

11/12/2019

I never really had an "Egyptology" stage as a kid, despite always being interested in history and archaeology, but I certainly understand why it has an enduring mass appeal.

A few weeks ago I went to the Tutankamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh exhibition at Saachi Gallery, because my travelling companion wanted a gander, and I figured that it would be interesting to see some very unique items, and also to see how the exhibition itself measured to the hype.

Oh there is hype. This is absolutely a "blockbuster" exhibition, proudly trumpeting in it's sales copy the record-breaking volume of visitors in other countries, and stressing the likelihood of tickets selling out.

I decided that rather than try to compile my thoughts into a review afterward (which would mean, realistically, I'd never get round to it), I'd drop a few live tweets to capture my thoughts and feelings as I went round.

Here are the compiled tweets in one spot for you!

The Exhibition continues in London to Sunday 3rd May 2020.

Size Matters

29/11/2019

This was a thing of beauty.
They stood, seemingly engrossed in the details of the famous painting.
Entranced it appeared.
Staring in silence.
And then this.

Topical AND Cheap

19/9/2019

Huge respect to the various arts and crafts events organisers making the most of making things without much to start off with.