Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Volunteers needed for dark tourism discussion
Dark tourism is the act of visiting sites associated with death and suffering. There can be a variety of reasons why people visit including being interested in the history, for entertainment or even if they are contemplating their own mortality. Dark tourism sites can range from entertainment-led such as London Dungeon to serious and tragic locations linked to human genocide such as Auschwitz.
Museums of Crime and Punishment are in between these two types of site because they can be entertaining but also serious in their subject matter. They present the experiences of historical criminals who are interpreted to have either deserved or not deserved the punishments they were given.
Rhiannon Pickin, Lecturer in the School of Cultural Studies at Humanities at Leeds Beckett, will be leading a group discussion on visitor views about crime and punishment at Ripon Workhouse Museum on Friday 24 March at 11am.
Explaining what she needs from the volunteers, Rhiannon said: “The discussion will focus on people’s experiences visiting the Ripon Courthouse Museum and the Prison and Police Museum. Anyone who has visited these museums is welcome to come along to this group.
“The responses will be used to understand how visitors interpret the history that is presented at the sites and will be recorded and used in a PhD research project. The project will be looking at visitor emotions and responses to crime and punishment history in museums.”
The focus group will last no longer than one hour and will be made of up to ten people. If you are interested in taking part please contact Rhiannon at r.pickin@leedsbeckett.ac.uk. More background information will be sent to those taking part before the discussion.