Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex

Stuffed my dinner, scanned the brief, headlonged out the door, forgot about the road diversion into the Market Place, made a u-turn, arrived at Wiltshire Museum only two minutes late for the preview evening to their latest exhibition, convincing myself it’s often more interesting to go in blind to what the show is all about anyway!

There’s graffitied skateboards in the exhibition, embroideries, an abstract canvas, a jester’s uniform, old ledgers, ships in bottles, straw sculptures, a video of Stonehenge at summer solstice, and many other fascinating items you’d be excused for misunderstanding how they all relate if the rooms was stripped of the information boards and the exhibition’s title, Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex.

The exhibition opens at Wiltshire Museum from today, Saturday 5th April and runs until Saturday 6th September 2025; plenty of time to pay it a visit, and I recommend you do.

Fortunately for my ignorance, external curator Mellany Robinson of The Museum of British Folklore was on hand to provide a brief speech explaining the reasoning behind it. All the items on show here are bonded by one concept, that they “tell local, political, expected and entirely unexpected stories to reframe the rich heritage and vibrant present day folk cultures for modern audiences.” And as being folk culture, all the items are created by folk without the disciplines of their craft via official training or education.

Now I can relate! Although I don’t wish to discuss my short-lived art college days, my creative labours are all self-taught, save some advice from cartoonists and writers in my younger days. One piece in the exhibit in particular caught my fascination, as a punk-paste zine-maker of yesteryear; an amateurishly hand-drawn flyer for the 1979 Stonehenge Festival. I strongly suspect, whatever angle you come at this from, whether historian, antique dealer, or folk musician, counterculture artist, or possibly more simply, you hold a passing interest in the origins of local folklore, you will find many objects here on display to fascinate you.

I left feeling enlightened, and perhaps a smidgen abashed by the many things I didn’t know. A Hob-Nob is not biscuit, rather a horse-like costumed fellow in the Salisbury Giant, a midsummer procession first recorded in 1572, for example! I now understand why Great Wishford has Oak Apple Day, and what it means to proclaim, “Grovely, Grovely and all Grovely!”

A handcrafted Wiltshire sweetheart pin cushion made by a World War I veteran, a rare ship crafted entirely from straw linking to Poole’s maritime heritage, and a poignant portrait by a Nigerian artist created while seeking asylum in Swindon, are items the Museum hail are the highlights, but depending on your personal interests, I believe what will constitute the highlight will be open to interpretation, being such a timeless mixed bag of tricks held together only by this theme of folk art; I have plenty of musician friends of whom, I guess, would be fascinated by the instruments, artists who would love the artwork from a community project, and others who would cherish this Wessex folk calendar feel to the whole exhibit, from the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge to the May Day celebrations in Cerne Abbas.

Now I’m concerned by my overuse of the word “fascinating,” but the boot fits, that’s what it surprisingly is!

Curator Mellany Robinson told how the The Museum of British Folklore doesn’t have a fixed venue, and it started because founder Simon Costin was, “passionate about what museums call intangible cultural heritage, the heritage of folklore which has historically been suppressed, and overlooked. So, when people die, their works get chucked, because it isn’t considered financial value, but it is of huge personal and historic value.”

Simon Costin founded the The Museum of British Folklore by “buying an old caravan on Ebay in 2008, and travelled around the country for six months turning it into a museum, to test the response. And we need a Museum of British Folklore because we are one of the very few countries which doesn’t have one.”

This project, a collaboration with the Wessex Museum’s collections and the Museum of British Folklore, is more anti-museum than museum in the traditional sense. With many items by unknown creators and certainly all of them unprofessional, it’s more of a hobbit-hole of hidden treasures and curiosities.

“We had to share what we thought of as folk culture because lots of people think certain things of folk culture,” Mellany explained, “but our definition is; something creative not necessarily tangible, produced by someone who doesn’t have formal training in that medium.”

Again, we find Wiltshire Museum bucking the preconceived stereotypes of what constitutes traditional aspects of a museum exhibition, and we should consider ourselves lucky to have them on our doorstep here in Devizes, putting the “muse” in “museum!”

Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex opens today, and runs until Saturday 6th September. Summer Opening Times are from 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday. Entry to the exhibition is included in the admission ticket. Tickets cost from £8.50 (concessions available,) and it’s free for under 18s. Director of Wiltshire Museum David Dawson has an online talk introducing the new exhibition on the 8th April.

Do check the Museum’s website for there are many great events upcoming, including the Curious Kids workshops for ages 3-11 and the Museum Explorers Club for 5-7 year olds, lectures, walks and stone carving courses.