Episode 8: Making the Museum Feel Alive

In this episode of the Therapeutic Landscapes podcast, Rebecca speaks with Emalee Beddoes, Curator of Collections & Engagement at Herefordshire Museums & Galleries, about folk art, rural craft, museum-making, co-production, and the work of creating cultural spaces that feel alive.

Emalee’s role sits at a rich intersection between collections, communities, artists, volunteers, research, public programming, and hands-on engagement. As Hereford Museum and Art Gallery moves through redevelopment, she is part of the slow, thoughtful process of imagining what a new gallery can become, especially when a museum is understood as more than a place of display.

The conversation moves through some of the remarkable collections held in Herefordshire, including straw craft, smocks, miniature ceramic jugs, gingerbread moulds, rural making, local fairs, Alfred Watkins, ley lines, and the deep creativity embedded in ordinary and working-class cultural forms. These objects open up bigger questions about who gets to define art, how craft traditions are kept alive, and how museums can honour the richness of local creativity without flattening it into something tidy and distant.

A central thread in the episode is the idea that museums can invite people into process, memory, making, humour, and relationship. Emalee reflects on folk practice, flow states, collective effervescence, participatory making, cultural stewardship, and the importance of creating spaces where visitors are not simply looking at finished objects behind glass, but are able to feel some of the energy, skill, care, and social life that surrounds them.

The episode also touches on Emalee’s previous work on Common Ground at The Wilson, and how ideas of land, access, enclosure, heritage, and community continue to inform her curatorial thinking. Across the conversation, there is a strong sense of the museum as a place of hosting, invitation, discovery, and belonging.

At its heart, this is a conversation about how collections can connect us to place, how craft carries knowledge, and how museums might become spaces where people feel able to play, make, wonder, remember, and take part.

Bio:

Emalee is a museum curator with over 10 years’ experience delivering exhibitions and cultural programmes across the West Midlands. She is Curator of Collections and Engagement at Hereford Museums and Galleries, where she is leading the arts strand of the museum’s major redevelopment. Her practice centres on co-production, working with artists and communities to explore and reinterpret historic collections for today, with a particular focus on folk art, humour in art, and strengthening rural arts ecologies. 

Link:

Instagram: @emaleebeddoes

Herefordshire Museums & Galleries: @herefordshiremuseums