The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage have, over many years, created exhibitions comprising info panels printed on card or stiff paper.  Our exhibitions have toured regularly around various exhibition hosts – museums, libraries, heritage centres, the Exmoor National Park visitor centres etc.  In addition, we have created topic specific exhibitions linked to our publications entitled The Women of Hoar Oak Cottage, The Soldiers of Hoar Oak Cottage and a Portrait of Hoar Oak Cottage. Our latest publication, in hand, will be about The Scottish Shepherds of Hoar Oak Cottage.

It felt timely to create a more sustainable and substantive set of exhibition panels based on the core interpretive themes used by The Friends – namely The Place, The People and The Life.  The plan is that these could, in future, be offered as a standalone exhibition or used in conjunction with the topic specific exhibitions described above.  The trustee leading this project has previously had dealings with The Touring Exhibitions Group and felt they would be a good source of advice and means of advertising our exhibition to hosts, particularly around the southwest of England, looking for ‘off the shelf’ exhibitions to use in their venues.

Thanks to the grant from the British Association for Local History this aim has now been achieved.  Six A1 size posters have been created on the themes The Place, The People, The Life.  The content was influenced by feedback from previous exhibitions, training received in creating heritage exhibitions and the design was influenced by ideas gleaned from other heritage exhibitions - most particularly from The Somerset Rural Life Museum.  Our aim now is to provide links to additional digital material alongside our new exhibition panels using QR codes fixed on separate mini-exhibition boards. This will enable that digital material to be up-to-date, regularly refreshed and relevant.

After taking advice from two local printing firms, the exhibition board material chosen was 5mm Foamboard printed in weather resistant sealed matt laminate.  The board chosen is sturdy, sustainable, lightweight, easy to hang and ultimately recyclable.  It also allowed the project to come in on budget.

The Touring Exhibition Group (now The Exhibition Group) focuses more closely on the administration and business of running exhibitions.  The hope to include our new exhibitions in their Touring Exhibition Booking system was therefore no longer an option.  However, they were extremely welcoming and offered free access to their information and resources to help with this project. Our first two exhibitions using the BALH funded exhibition panels are already booked and it will be formally launched at the Exmoor National Park Visitor Centre in North Devon including a talk in their Lecture Theatre.  BALH’s funding assistance will be acknowledged as part of this launch and a dedicated acknowledgement poster will always accompany the new exhibition panels.