Absolute Units

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In 2013, we acquired a collection of over 1,800 rural films that had been carefully assembled, preserved, and frequently shared by a Nottinghamshire farmer called Richard Watts. 

Now, with funding from the BFI, we've been able to work on this incredible archive, cataloguing the films, digitising them, and sharing them in screenings of our own.

In this episode, Joe (just Joe this time!) is joined by the team working on our BFI-funded project, Watts in the Country: Hannah Silver and Jen Patterson. We talk about the challenges of working with archival film, the significance of 16mm in today's digital age, and what the films themselves reveal about rural history.

Come to our YouTube live screening, 26 October @ 3pm – https://www.youtube.com/live/9ZFpDCDWncU?si=EfHc8YGkPUT7mUDA

Relevant links:

• Watts in the Country: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-views/inclusive-approaches-to-rural-films/

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Sorry we missed a week! We're catching up after both being out on leave.

In this episode, Joe and Ollie chat about what they've been up to lately with many surprising links to rural history: from Ollie's son sending him surreal livestock portraiture on WhatsApp, to Joe's visit to Versailles. We also discuss what's coming up soon - including an episode about the Bayeux Tapestry.

Relevant links:

• CF Payne's art: https://www.cfpayne.com/
• Joe's interview with NPR about cottagecore: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/09/900498227/the-escapist-land-of-cottagecore-from-marie-antoinette-to-taylor-swift
• Brother may I have some oats: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-does-brother-may-i-have-some-oats-mean-the-meme-of-two-hungry-pigs-explained
• Compton Verney: https://www.comptonverney.org.uk/
• Guy Baxter to become our new Director: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-views/guy-baxter-new-director/
• Who was Horatio Bland? https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/blog/who-was-horatio-bland

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

What will farming look like in 100 years time? That's the question asked by a group of University of Reading PhD students, managed by Rosy Scholes and Ellen Knight, as part of the University of Reading's centenary celebrations.

In this pod, Joe and Ollie catch up with Rosy and Ellen about their research and their project, which culminated in the burial of a time capsule in our garden, filled with research, creative responses, and visions of what the future of farming might be.

The time capsule project was funded by the University of Reading Centenary Project Grant Scheme and completed with the assistance of Phillippa Heath, Dr Ollie Douglas, Dannielle Keegel, Katie Somerville-Hall, Talor Whitham, Tatiana Dickins, Wiktoria Szkolnicka, Prof Deepa Senapathi, Lucy Markwell and Claire Biggs.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

How do you lead a rural history museum in 2026? What does that look like in practice? And how does our contemporary work vary to the vision of our founders back in 1951?

In this second of two conversations with Kate Arnold-Forster, Director of The Museum of English Rural Life and the University of Reading's Museums and Collections, Ollie and Joe chat with Kate about our museum's ongoing evolution, the power of eBay for contemporary collecting, and what the future holds for university museums.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

So far we've spoken a lot about The Museum of English Rural Life's earliest years. Yet so much of what we are today results from a radical rethinking of what The MERL can be, which has happened under the brilliant stewardship of Kate Arnold-Forster, Director of The Museum of English Rural Life and the University of Reading's Museums and Collections.

In this episode, we speak with Kate about her journey into museums, the significance of university museums, and her pivotal role in turning The MERL into the museum you know today.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

What have we been up to lately? What's coming up? And what's the rural significance of Bad Bunny's performance at the Superbowl?

In this episode, Joe and Ollie have a general chat about a bunch of different topics, which each connect - in some surprising ways - to the collections we hold here at The Museum of English Rural Life.

• Guy Shrubsole on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/guyshrubsole.bsky.social
• The Skylon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(Festival_of_Britain)

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

We're back with our second episode with the University of Reading's Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel! We continue talking about their Nature-centric Catalyst project, how we can rebuild our relationships with the natural world, and what's coming up next for our collaboration with Tom and Marzia at the museum.

Relevant links:

• Nature-centric Catalyst
• Tom Oliver
• Marzia Briel

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

How does humanity fit into nature? How long have we viewed ourselves as being apart from it? And what are the problems that creates?

This time, we chat with Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel from the University of Reading to learn about their Nature-centric Catalyst project. We discuss the rights of nature, the advocacy landscape today, and how we can better centre the natural world in our thoughts and deeds.

Also, we end with a 5-minute meditation, beautifully performed by Marzia.

Relevant links:

• Nature-centric Catalyst
• Tom Oliver
• Marzia Briel

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Okay. Take 2.

Last month we drew to a close two major installations at The MERL: our gallery trail Radical Rural, and our exhibition Voices of the Countryside.

In this episode, Joe and Ollie reflect on these two projects. We explore what we learned from them, what they meant to us, and how we want to build on this work for the future.

We also talk about the World Cup, explain what the heck went wrong last time, and go on a few other tangents that we don't regret at all. Enjoy.

Relevant links:

• Radical Rural: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/radical-rural-gallery-trail/
• Man in the Woods' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/man.in.the.woods/?hl=en
• Wild Card's Rewilding the Ghost Woods: https://wildcard.land/campaigns/rewild-the-ghost-woods
• CPRE: https://www.cpre.org.uk/

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Greetings, friends and listeners. We had a problem with this week's episode where the SD card that we're using for recording has broken, leaving us with a very patchy episode not really fit for human consumption. We will be putting our best minds to the matter of resolving this and will be back with the podcast we intended to put out next week. Thank you for sticking with The Museum of English Rural Life.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/