Temporary Exhibition Gallery

22 March to 2 November 2025

In collaboration with the Museum of Chelmsford and Alzheimer’s Society.

Art is an exciting journey. Forget the idea that you need specialist knowledge or that it’s not your ‘world’. Shifting Perspectives is all about seeing art with fresh eyes - your eyes - and exploring it from a new angle.

In a series of workshops facilitated with our exhibition partner, Alzheimer’s Society, we invited people living with dementia and their companions to explore works of art by women artists from our collection. They shared their own perspectives, thoughts and observations with us, and our exhibition shines a light on the works of art they chose.

Throughout this exhibition, we encouraged you to take a slow looking approach to exploring the art on display and share your perspective. Find out more information about the art on display using information cards available to read and carry around. Share your own thoughts on our ‘Share Your Wonder’ wall, devised by artist Elaine Tribley.

Curator Claire Willetts

23 March 2024 to 23 February 2025

The Peregrine by J.A. Baker was first published in 1967. The book was an immediate success. Reviews called it a masterpiece of nature writing and it won several awards. Since then, Baker’s unique poetic writing has continued to inspire a new generation of nature writers and naturalists, and The Peregrine was recently voted one of the UK’s top 10 favourite nature books. But despite all this success, very little was known about Baker himself.

John Alec Baker (1926 – 1987) was born, and lived almost his whole life, in Chelmsford. His writing is based on walks and cycle rides around the Blackwater estuary, Danbury Hill and the Chelmsford area. Here he followed and studied peregrine falcons, condensing all his observations into the book The Peregrine.

“For ten years I spent all my winters searching for that restless brilliance, for the sudden passion and violence that peregrines flush from the sky.”

In this exhibition we explore Baker’s life, his love of nature and writing through the archive of his work held by the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex. It is the first time that this archive has been on public display.

Curator Sarah Harvey

24 June 2023 to 29 October 2023

Behind the Rainbow was a collection of personal stories and experiences from the LGBTQ+ community, showing the creativity, complexity, and humanity of its members. This exhibition recognised the relationship between self-expression and identity and invited visitors to connect and empathise with the people behind the stories.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community across Essex were invited to submit poetry, photographs and objects related to their experiences. Local artists supported the creation of other pieces through workshops at The Art Place, Patch, and Chelmsford Museum. We hope that through this display, visitors saw the LGBTQ+ community for what it truly is: a diverse group of unique, creative individuals, who all have their own stories to tell.

We hope that this exhibition challenged perceptions about what it means to be LGBTQ+ and sparked conversations about the challenges our community still faces. We invite visitors to consider what we have in common, rather than what separates us.

25 March 2023 to 4 June 2023

100 Stories
100 Silks
100 Miles

In 2022 a brand-new festival of connecting, creating, talking, and walking was launched in Chelmsford, Essex.

Led by Chelmsford Council for Voluntary Service (CVS), in collaboration with international arts company Kinetika, the festival bought together a wide range of individuals and local community groups. They asked them to share a story about what living in Chelmsford means to them, and in particular, what it had meant to them during the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Together, they turned each of the 100 stories into its own hand-painted silk batik flag, creating a mobile installation of 100 works of art. The flags were then carried by volunteers on 100 miles of local walking routes, sharing the stories as they went.

Chelmsford 100 is a legacy of community will and spirit through difficult times. The festival will grow in years to come; creating an expanding and connected celebration that everyone can feel a part of.

This exhibition showcased a selection of the flags alongside film footage and photographs of some of the 100 miles they have journeyed. The display explained how the flags were made and visitors were able to read each of the 100 stories that inspired them.

15 October 2022 to 14 October 2023

Forecast22 was a digital artwork and interactive website celebrating the centenary of the first UK public radio broadcasts. Artist Sian Fan has collaborated with the Museum of Chelmsford to explore this important moment in history, when Marconi Company engineers were asked to create a pioneering weekly radio show from a hut in Writtle. As a website, Forecast22 is available beyond Chelmsford and around the world, echoing the expansion of UK broadcasting from that small hut in Writtle to our digitally connected world today.

Led by Captain Peter Eckersley, the broadcasts began on 14th February 1922. They were experimental, irreverent and very popular with the growing community of amateur radio listeners. Finally they could receive entertainment broadcast across the ether into their own homes. The shows were so popular that they led to the creation of the BBC in October 1922.

Forecast22 draws on the few surviving memories, letters and artefacts that document those first broadcasts. There are no recordings of the original shows but the Writtle hut, where they were made, is preserved within the Museum of Chelmsford’s collections.

Using 3D immersive scans alongside newly recorded performances, the artwork makes connections between 1922 and 2022. The project invited local creative talent to recreate, reimagine and bring back to life the historic broadcast material. Recorded in the Writtle hut, the new musical and spoken performances sit alongside contemporary pieces, celebrating both the past and present creativity in Chelmsford.

Sian Fan

Sian Fan is an interdisciplinary artist from Chelmsford. Her practice explores the interaction between physical and virtual worlds through sculpture, performance, animation, moving image and virtual & augmented reality. She has recently completed a residency at the V&A Museum and has exhibited internationally with institutions including Tate Modern and FACT Liverpool, as well as producing work with Channel 4, the BBC and Facebook/Meta.

Behind the scenes of Forecast 22

22 July to 25 September 2022

In 2021, we challenged our museum volunteers to choose postcards from our collection, by the original Chelmsford photographer Frederick Spalding, that they found interesting. They then went looking to try to identify where the image was taken from and retake the photo.

In this exhibition, we display what they captured themselves compared to the original postcard and ask why they chose those postcards to recreate themselves. Here you will also find out more about why we originally sent postcards and more information on Frederick Spalding’s background.

Thank you to the Museum of Chelmsford volunteers who made this exhibition possible; Christine Chorley, Kate Middleditch, Margaret Thomas, Steve Davey, Tracey Burns and Paul Weston.

10 December 2020 to 30 November 2021

Between 2020 and 2021 we travelled all over Chelmsford with our amazing museum volunteers to bring you some of the fascinating history right on our doorsteps.

Episode one: Hylands Estate

For our first film, we were On the Road with the Mayor of Chelmsford, discovering more about the incredible horticultural history of Hylands Estate.

Episode two

Discover Princes and Kings in our second film. We've been On the Road in Broomfield with Steve, one of our museum volunteers.

Episode three

Join museum volunteer Chris Scott to discover the dark period of witch trials and persecution in Chelmsford's history.