Partnership between The Scouts Heritage Service and the Food Museum.
This exhibition came out of a presentation by the Food Museum at the 2022 AIM conference. As Jenny Cousins, Food Museum Director, explained their new narrative approach of hanging their stories off the themes of grow, make and eat I realised that there was a correlation between those themes and some of the stories held within the Scout Heritage Collection. After a quick conference chat over a cup of tea about the potential of hosting a touring exhibition I went away to research potential content.
We already had an awareness of some of the stories we might want to include such as the role Scouts played helping on farms during the World Wars and some of the badges which could link to themes. However the more I looked the number of potential stories increased. These included schemes such as the Scout Farm School which ran from 1911 to 1916 to stories which occurred whilst we were researching. We could not have predicted the initiative instigated by Scouts to save the unopened food disposed of by people waiting in “the queue” for her late Majesty’s lying in state and donate it to food banks. However, this story showed how our values as Scouts guide our activities and support those in need and brought the exhibition right up to date.
We decided to use the Food Museum’s themes of grow, make and eat to structure our narrative with each section looking at historic and modern examples of Scout activity. We were also able to use three cases each linked to a section. Objects on display include the Scout Rabbit Farmer Badge available during the Second World War (not to train ninja bunnies as one imaginative Cub thought!), a Jamboree Cook Book from 1947 which includes ways to adapt menus for Muslim and Jewish Scouts and the Squirrel Scout Let it Grow Badge first issued in 2021 as part of the Scout programme for 4 – 6 year olds.
We also wanted to include Scouts from the local district in the exhibition and were able to work with Scout Groups from the Stowmarket area to source photos of food activities. Young people from the three youngest section of the Scouts; Squirrel Scouts, Beaver Scouts and Cub Scouts, decorated traditional enamel plates with images of their favourite foods and scenes of cooking on camp. The plates have been hung in the exhibition. We are lucky to have a supporter, Tony Harvey, who fundraises on behalf of The Scout Heritage Service. We have been able to use Tony’s most recent donation to offer every Scout in the Stowmarket District the opportunity to visit the Food Museum for free.
Our aspiration is to tour the exhibition around the UK and we are currently reaching out to potential host venues. If you’d like to visit the exhibition is open until 10 September 2023. See the Food Museum website for more details.
Caroline Pantling
Head of Heritage Services, The Scouts
Museums Essex 