National Sporting Heritage Day 2023

Celebrate with us at the Paralympic Heritage Centre

Saturday 30th September, FREE entry

We’re inviting you to a unique opportunity to see the beautiful cloak worn by Sir Ian McKellen at the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. It has been on display in our Heritage Centre since opening, but due to its fragility it will now have some restoration work before going into storage for conservation.

At this 'last chance to see' event you will get to view the cloak up close and out of the case from 10am until 2pm.

As well as this, you will have the chance to view what will replace this piece in our display.

Changing the display 

Will Phillips, Curator at Discover Bucks Museum, showed our museum trainees how to safely remove the items from display, handle items of clothing correctly and create specialist padding with conservation tissue to protect and pack the cloak for safe storage.  The trainees then worked to curate a new display with different items from our collection chosen by the public.

To help us decide what items were chosen to replace the cloak we asked our community to vote for their favourite items from a selection of 4 items. We had a fantastic response to our request!

These were:

1. White round-necked collarless jacket fastened by 4 white buttons; embellished with printed black text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; part of "Empowerment" costume worn by a performer during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Or,
2. White and orange collared shirt embellished with printed black text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; part of "Empowerment" costume worn by a performer during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

 

1. All-in-one plastic strapless dress comprising back-laced bodice and skirt; spray painted red, white and blue in the design of the Union flag; dress labelled 'Blessing Aladetoun'; named after the placard bearer who wore it for Great Britain during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Or,
2. Vivienne Westwood dress; olive green; full length; sleeveless with shoulder straps; worn by blind opera singer Denise Leigh during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

 Results from the voting

1. The plastic Union Jack dress with  45% of the votes
2. The orange collarless jacket with 31% of the votes 

Watch our video of the changeover below

Museum trainee Adam commented: 

My favourite new item was the Union Jack dress. This was because it was interesting that the decoration was created by using spray paint.

Museum trainee Thomas explained:

Today we worked with Will to remove the 2012 jacket and the Ian McKellen robe from the display and place the union jack dress and the human rights jacket and t-shirt in the display case. What I enjoyed the most about that day was being able to learn more about how we handle our objects, the process of removing and changing the exhibit around, and being able to get a more hands on experience and do it. It was a rather interesting learning experience.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the new exhibits!

Feedback 

We'd love to receive your feedback about this event and what part you enjoyed the most. Please complete our feedback form. All responses are confidential and can be anonymous.

Upcoming Collections Project

We are delighted to receive a Sporting Heritage Microform Grant which will support our Collections work. More information about the project will be shared shortly.