In this episode, Rebecca speaks with Emalee Beddoes, Curator of Collections & Engagement at Herefordshire Museums & Galleries, about museums, folk art, rural craft, co-production, and the process of reimagining historic collections for contemporary communities.

Emalee shares what it means to work as a curator of both collections and engagement, and how her role moves between research, object care, public programming, community work, craft activities, artists, volunteers, and the development of a new gallery for Hereford Museum and Art Gallery, which is currently in redevelopment.

The conversation explores Herefordshire’s rich craft and folk art collections, including straw craft, smocks, miniature jugs, gingerbread moulds, Alfred Watkins, ley lines, rural making, local fairs, and the deep creativity embedded in ordinary and working-class cultural forms.

Rebecca and Emalee also discuss how museums might move beyond presenting finished objects and instead invite people into the process, feeling, making, memory, and relationship behind them. Emalee reflects on ideas of flow, collective effervescence, cultural stewardship, participatory making, rural arts ecologies, and the importance of creating museum spaces that feel welcoming, playful, accessible, and alive.

The episode also touches on Emalee’s previous work on Common Ground at The Wilson, co-production with artists and communities, the role of heritage crafts, and how museums can hold space for both care and curiosity.

This is a conversation about how museums can become places of connection rather than distance, where collections are not just preserved behind glass, but opened up as invitations into making, belonging, humour, place, and shared cultural life.

Links:

Instagram: @emaleebeddoes

Herefordshire Museums & Galleries: @herefordshiremuseums

Therapeutic Landscapes: www.therapeutic-landscapes.org