Tilly Blyth, the new director at The Weald & Downland Living Museum, is delighted to say that she lives and breathes museums – the perfect qualification for an exciting new challenge ahead.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers and I'm really
00:06lovely to meet and to speak to Tilly Blythe, who is the new Museum Director at the Wildern
00:11Downland Living Museum. That's a fantastic position to walk into because it's just such
00:15a brilliant place, isn't it? What's your assessment of what makes Wildern Downland so special?
00:23Oh, thanks for inviting me to talk to you, Phil. So what makes it so special? I think it's a number
00:28of different things, really. I mean, this is an amazing museum dedicated to preserving historic
00:35buildings. So we have over 50 historic buildings brought from all over the southeast of England
00:41and repositioned here so that we can really understand how people lived in the past and
00:46the types of buildings that they lived in and the way that those were created.
00:52But also, of course, we're about rural trade and craft and the things that they did in those
00:57buildings. So I think that's such an important part of the story that we tell here.
01:05First and foremost, I would say what makes this space very special is the community.
01:13You know, this is a museum that not only has 60 members of staff, but has an amazing team of 350
01:22volunteers and they give their time completely free to us. And that's really a very special,
01:29very precious thing that they are keen to come and be part of this.
01:34When you come to this, as you say, someone who lives and breathes museums,
01:38why is that? Why do you thrive on museums? What is it?
01:44I just think they're amazing spaces. I think they play a very important part for us
01:50in our kind of civic society and in our understanding of our world. So, you know,
01:56we tend to think of museums as places where we think about the past and where we understand,
02:02you know, who lived in the past and what was important in the past. But I would say they're
02:07also just as important in terms of thinking about who we are today and who we might be in the future.
02:14You know, they enable us to have a frame, you know, ways that we might change or help us to
02:21think about what's important to us in the future. So, yeah, I think there is much about informing
02:29present and the future as they are about the past.
02:32And you had a long time in the science museum before going into academia,
02:36not so long in academia, two years before realising you had to be in a museum.
02:41Oh, absolutely. I worked for 20 years at the Science Museum. I was head of collections and
02:44principal curator there, did all sorts of amazing things, you know, opened a major permanent gallery
02:52there on the information age, met the Queen five times, worked Stephen Hawking's office for the
03:00for the nation, you know, did some really fabulous things and then went into academia,
03:07and then went into academia, did a couple of years teaching and lecturing with some
03:12wonderful students and colleagues there. But yes, you know, it's that sense of working in a museum
03:20and working as a team and working together, you know, really, you have to work collectively in
03:28a museum if you're going to achieve things. No one can work in isolation. And I think I love,
03:33you know, I really love that sense of what are we going to do next? You know,
03:37how are we going to make that successful? And how are we really going to do something that
03:42makes an impact for our visitors? So, yeah, that's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
03:48And obviously, as you start that, it's a question of looking, observing and getting to know,
03:52isn't it? But you have a sense that we belong to that. And the fact is that the museum is
03:56not recognised nationally as much as it should be. We all know it's a fantastic place, but does
04:01the country? Yeah, I think we have a much bigger role to play there. Because this museum, you know,
04:08it was founded in 1970. It was at that time one of the foundational museums for the Association
04:15of Independent Museums. It's called AIME. And, you know, that's really important. It's historically
04:23a very important museum for the history of museums in the country. And we have what's
04:28called a designated collection. So many museums have what's called an accredited collection, you
04:35know, they have accreditation from the Arts Council England, but we have a designated collection,
04:41which means it has national importance. And our designated buildings are, you know,
04:49one of the biggest collections of timber framed buildings, which you can come to view and study.
04:54So, you know, it's a really, it's a really, really important museum. And I want to make sure
04:59people know about that, you know, its reputation precedes it.
05:04It looks like you are sitting somewhere very appropriate. Where are you?
05:09Oh, yes, I am. This is my office. But I am fabulously lucky, because I've been given
05:16an early 17th century office, which is part of an extension to a house, which was originally
05:22in Reigate High Street. So, I don't know if you can see behind me, this beautiful kind of
05:29carved fireplace. And it also has the original decorative wall painting. So in front of me,
05:36where you can't see the original 17th century decorative wall paintings, but you might just
05:41be able to see kind of recreation of those on the wall behind me. So that's a modern day
05:47recreation of the originals that I'm looking at. And all of this...
05:52Sorry, you're actually sitting somewhere truly inspiring for the role that you've got, aren't you?
05:58Yeah, absolutely. And this was, you know, I'm very much aware that I'm kind of sitting in history.
06:04So this was owned by a family of brewers named Cade. And the reason it's here is because the
06:11building was going to be demolished to make way for a shopping centre in Reigate. So rather than
06:16have that happened, the museum decided to preserve it, move it and rebuild it. So yeah, I'm very
06:23lucky.
06:24Fabulous place to sit. Well, really lovely to meet you and very, very best wishes for the new job.
06:30Oh, thank you so much.