Newsletter: November 2024
Welcome to the latest edition of the Royal Mint Museum Newsletter. November was full of travel for the team at the Royal Mint Museum. Find out more below.
Engineering Education Scheme Wales
For the fourth year running we are proud to be taking part in the Engineering Education Scheme Wales’s 6th form project. In which students are set a ‘real world’ engineering problem and given six months to design a solution.
In 2024-25 we are working with a team of students from Y Pant Comprehensive school in Rhondda Cynon Taff. With the support of our Education and Learning Manager, Amy Williams, alongside Royal Mint Engineers the students have been asked to develop an automated system for categorising the electronic waste feed stock for the recycling process.
To get to grips with their project, the students recently attended a site visit at the Mint to see the new Precious Metals Recovery area and understand more about their challenge.
After their visit they went back to school to start working on their ideas. The next stage in the process will be a workshop session hosted at the University of South Wales to begin work on building prototypes for their solution.
We are excited to see what they come up with!
Sight Life Training
Our team recently undertook a training session with the local charity Sight Life. The charity offers a wide range of local services to support blind and partially sighted people across much of South Wales.
The training sought to educate the team about the different types of sight loss and how best to assist visitors to the Royal Mint Experience (RME) who might be experiencing it. A particularly poignant part of this was that the whole group had the opportunity to experience the RME guided factory tour completely blindfolded. This involved the blindfolded individual being guided along the route by a colleague. How best to guide was clearly explained and demonstrated and participants had the chance to be both the guide, and the guided.
It was a powerful experience and highlighted, quite clearly, how aspects of the tour could be improved to bring the coin-making process to life to those with limited, or no, vision. These will be integrated into future developments and improvements to the Royal Mint Experience and to our exhibitions and lectures around the country.
Money Talks: Art, Society & Power exhibition
On a very cold November morning, our team boarded a minibus to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to visit the Money Talks: Art, Society & Power exhibition. For this major, well reviewed exhibition the Ashmolean Museum borrowed several important objects from the Royal Mint Museum including Edward VIII pattern coins, the box in which they were discovered and a Janvier reducing machine. In addition, earlier in the month, our Museum Director, Kevin Clancy, also gave a talk at a study day in the Ashmolean.
We were met by Agnes Valencak, Head of Exhibitions Projects who showed us up to the gallery. We had plenty of time to wander through and enjoy the fascinating collection of objects that had been expertly curated by Dr Shailendra Bhandare, Assistant Keeper (South Asian Numismatics). Shailendra also is a Member of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee. We were all very excited to see the objects that Sarah Tyley, our Collections Manager, had arranged to be very carefully transported to Oxford, now in situ. They are clearly an important addition to this absorbing showcase. Shailendra was kind enough to join us all for lunch afterwards before we visited the Money Gallery. We all agreed that the trip had been well worthwhile. The exhibition is open until 5 January 2025 if you would like to see it for yourself.
Chris Barker’s Travels
Chris Barker, our Information and Research Manager, has had a particularly busy month! At the start of November, he got the chance to visit Liverpool Hope University which has an amazing collection of material relating to Edward Carter Preston, a coin and medal designer from the early 20th century. Chris was able to examine this beautiful collection of objects, many of which relate to coins or medals that Carter Preston worked on for the Royal Mint.
Chris also had the opportunity to travel around the world talking about the history of the Royal Mint. Beginning at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in London, with a talk bringing to life the rivalry and tensions found in the Mint’s engraving team in the 19th century, this was followed by two talks overseas to support the Royal Mint’s Precious Metal department. In Dubai he explored the history of the sovereign in the Middle East, whilst in Hamburg he was joined by Public Engagement and Information Officer, David Mason, and together they examined the Mint’s German links with a talk and a display of Museum objects to an audience invited to the Anglo-German Club.
