Get Stuffed! Workshop

James Black

New Walk Museum - Council Room

July 31^st 2010

The official Lyric Lounge programme stated that the Get Stuffed! workshop would be ‘a writing session with the Book Doctor and a menagerie of stuffed animals!’ with this sparse information and equipped only with a notebook and pen I ventured into the unknown.   

The Council Room at New Walk Museum underwent something of a transformation last Saturday morning as the taxidermy experience that was Get Stuffed! got underway. The incongruous and slightly surreal sight of an exceptionally realistic looking fox and badger sitting squarely in the centre of the room met the participants’ gaze as they seated themselves for the two hour workshop.

The Get Stuffed! workshop was not led by a vet, (it was a little late for that,) but by a doctor of sorts Alison Dunne Leicester Libraries’ resident Book Doctor. Alison explained that the subject of taxidermy had long been a fascination of hers ever since she was a child and when the opportunity arose to view the selection of stuffed animals owned by New Walk Museum she jumped at the chance.

To begin the workshop Alison asked the assembled if they would take a walk about the room and write down any thoughts, feelings or ideas that came into their minds as they viewed the preserved creatures. Some of the more macabre sights included a jar with two moles inside, a primate foetus and a glass case which contained a number of dissected birds at each stage of the taxidermy process.    

We were then asked to come up with metaphors which could be applied to the animals; the crocodile skin was described as a handbag, the Roman snail a shrivelled up heart and the stitched-up bird as Frankenstein’s monster.  

The group then took a walk to the Wild Space area of the museum where stuffed animals are also present but are placed behind glass with descriptive notices, faux landscapes and scenery. Alison asked us whether we felt differently in this environment from being in the Council Room where we could reach out and touch the animals. There was general agreement that the sanitised Wild Space area felt much less intrusive and less like a display of dead animals than a group of artificial representations. Moreover, in the Council Room many of the creatures were in a partially dissected and dismembered state making their deaths all the more palpable and real.

Alison then used one of her favourite workshop techniques: a three minute stream-of-consciousness exercise writing anything that comes naturally without censoring or editing what is written. When this exercise was finished Alison asked us to edit what we had written into something more poetic.

Some extremely good pieces of writing were produced by each member of the workshop. One piece focused on the primate foetus, ‘strange unborn, stillborn creature with an undeveloped face resembling a tiger’s more than ape’s. So serious yet so young it has barely lived.’ Another’s writing centred on their reaction to being in this miasmatic atmosphere beginning with the powerful opening statement, ‘This is not my culture!’ denoting a visceral sense of not wanting any part of this deadly world. Perhaps the most strikingly creation came in the form a short story which imagined the animals taking their revenge capturing a woman and stripping her of her skin. There were audible gasps from The Book Doctor as this terrifying story unfolded. Once the woman had undergone the taxidermy process she was pinned down in the museum and turned into a display piece.     

The subject of taxidermy is a controversial one with many individuals and animal rights organisations seeing it as unnecessary and immoral. Many of New Walk Museum’s taxidermy pieces date back thirty or forty years to a period in time when perhaps there was not the same level of consciousness towards animal rights. The ethical debate surrounding taxidermy is an important aspect of viewing these creatures today and this subject alongside; death, the passing of time and what it means to be living creature, were raised during the two hour workshop. There is no doubt that the comically titled Get Stuffed! proved to be a thoroughly inspiring and thought-provoking workshop.