Absolute Units

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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/

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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/

Send us Fan Mail
How do museums engage with accessibility, both as spaces that welcome visitors and as collections of human stories?
On this episode, we're joined by the brilliant disability activist and performance artist Anahita Harding. 
We discuss Anahita's work in agricultural museums (both the Food Museum and The MERL), the histories of disability in our collection, and how we can improve access and representation for disabled people in the future.
Relevant links:
Anahita's website: https://anahitaharding.com/
Len's Leg: https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/newshow-a-false-leg-inspried-a-farm-safety-campaign
Curating Visibility: https://curatingforchange.org/
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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
Turns out delays come like London buses. First Joe got the flu. Then we accidentally re-shared the first episode with Guy rather than the new one. If you listened before we caught it, we hope you enjoyed that episode even more the second time.
Anyways, we're back! We return in full strength, with the right episode to boot, to pick up once more with the brilliant environmentalist, author, and campaigner Guy Shrubsole.
Where last time we charted a potted history of land ownership and access in England, from the Normans to the present day, this time we're honing in on one specific case study: hunting and more specifically grouse shooting. What does hunting teach us about how land gets used and shared? How has hunting changed? And what are the disastrous ecological impacts of unleashing 50 million pheasants each year into the English countryside?
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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
Oops, sorry folks, we accidentally uploaded our first conversation with Guy twice! We will fix this as soon as possible and share the actual episode either tomorrow or Monday. Thank you for bearing with us.
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Thanks for waiting for us, as we return with a second episode with the fantastic author, environmentalist, and campaigner Guy Shrubsole. 
Where last episode we spoke broadly about the history of land ownership in England, revving up to almost a thousand years an hour, this time we're lasering in on one specific part of rural English life that speaks to much of the complexities and tensions invoked by Guy's work as well as our collections: hunting. And more specifically, grouse shooting.
We discuss the modern invention of grouse shooting, the transformative impact of shooting culture on rural landscape and ecosystems, and the diabolical experiment we're all living through wherein 50 million pheasants get released into the countryside each year.
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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/