Data Hunters and Story Gatherers: towards community curatorship was a unique project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Between June 2023 and June 2026 Hunters and Gatherers worked with a new team of young volunteers to improve collections auditing and research, research significant, untold stories and develop community co-curation and engagement in new and exciting ways.
The project was split between Data Hunters, who hunted for objects in our collections related to both immigration and Basingstoke, and Story Gatherers, who are researching the social history of objects in our collections. Over the course of the project, the volunteers inventoried over 14,000 objects.
The team developed two exhibitions, both co-created with local communities, 'Basingstoke's My Home: Local Stories with Global Routes', showcasing the vibrant and diverse communities that enrich Basingstoke and 'Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen's Novels', celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth with an exhibition on working women in Jane's Hampshire.
The project also developed volunteer and collections management and expanded staff skills, with four internal secondment roles throughout the length of the project.
Through the project, over 86 volunteers were involved in Data Hunters and Story Gatherer roles. These roles have been aimed at young adults focusing on skills development and opportunities in museums as well as people from Winchester Women’s Institutes interested in working class and women’s histories.
