Destroying Nature: A new exhibition trail at the Great North Museum

Since the dawn of the Industrial era, human activity has transformed our environment – leaving destruction, pollution and even extinction in our wake. Join us on a trail which takes a fresh look at objects from the Museum’s collections through the lens of environmental history. Environmental history is the study of the changing relationship between people and nature. It explores how societies have shaped environments and how nature has shaped us.

This summer I am delighted to share a new exhibition trail at the Great North Museum: Hancock, created by myself and Dr Clare Hickman, and written by our second year environmental history students. They were challenged to research objects on display in the Museum and re-write their labels. What can these artefacts tell us about the interaction of people and nature in the past? We hope that by drawing attention to human impacts on environments in history, we can re-think our future.

Students were asked to re-write labels of objects on permanent display in the Great North Museum as a part of their assessment for the course. With some help from us and the curators at the Great North Museum, these were turned into a public exhibition trail, on display from July to September 2025. It was incredibly rewarding to see how the students explored their own diverse interests: selecting objects to research from a red squirrel to a fossilised tree to an Inuit kayak.

You can read more about the trail as well as the students’ labels on the Great North Museum’s webpage.

The trail was made possible by an Outreach and Engagement Project Grant from the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS).