Interview: Ursula Corcoran - Lighting up theatre of war

Ursula Corcoran never expected to be running a regimental museum in the heart of a rural market town.

Her original ambitions lay in the performing arts, and she spent many years acting and directing as well as running her own theatre in education company.

From this she has taken a rather unconventional route to becoming the managing director of the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock.

Originally from Staffordshire, she has fond memories of a childhood immersed in music and the theatre.

“I enjoyed the spectacle of theatre,” she says. “I was fortunate that my parents had me quite late in life, and I think by the time I came along they were starting to enjoy going out and doing things.

“One of the things they used to enjoy was going out to see ballet and opera. So I used to see the big spectacles of that from an early age and I was just enthralled by it. I loved it.

“But I liked the visuals of it and how technically it was put together. I could already understand that it was a world of fakery, of beautiful fakery.”

Ursula went on to gain a degree in American studies at Hull University — mainly, she admits, because she wanted the opportunity to spend a year in America.

“I did a year at South Carolina, and the whole year I was there I took classes in theatre. When I came back from America I hadn’t really done what I was supposed to do, which was history, politics, history of art and literature. I’d just done all the theatre stuff.”

After completing her degree at Hull, Ursula moved to Birmingham, where she started her theatre in education company.

“We were just a group of very enthusiastic women who didn’t really know what we were doing!” she laughs. “But every so often we’d get commissioned to do something or be on the receiving end of a grant and going into schools.”

Still enthused by the idea of a career in the theatre, Ursula went to Goldsmiths College in London to do an MA in acting and performing.

“I was still auditioning, still trying to get that big break,” she says. “But I recognised that actually I couldn’t dance and I couldn’t sing. Maybe I would become a character actress a few years hence, but that wasn’t going to happen imminently. So I then fell into theatre management.

“I was really fortunate because the venues I went into I was given a lot of freedom. I had an acting cooperative in one of them, so I was still able to direct and I was still able to act, but also be paid to run the venue.”

Ursula’s experiences included working at English National Opera as a front of house manager before moving into venue management, first in Potter’s Bar and later at the Rhodes Arts Centre and Museum in Bishop’s Stortford.

It was in Bishop’s Stortford that Ursula really laid the foundations for her current job, as she was involved in amalgamating two museums as well as regenerating the local community hall into a lively arts centre with theatre, bar and cafe.

By the time this was up and running Ursula’s first child had been born, so she left Bishop’s Stortford to set up her own consultancy business and also retrained as a further education lecturer.

In 2012, she took on the role of director at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, then still at the planning stage.

So what attracted her to the job?

“I was interested because it was a project,” she says. “They had the funding for the building but they didn’t have an interpretation plan or an activity plan, and they didn’t really know what they were going to put into the building.

“They knew they had three collections — the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, the Oxfordshire Yeomanry and SOFO’s own collection.

“But they didn’t know how to tell those stories or what the key hooks were going to be for both local community and a wider range of visitors. So that’s what got me here.”

Although she hasn’t had relevant professional training, Ursula believes she has the necessary experience and skills to run the museum.

“I’ve been around enough museums and curated within enough venues to know what you should be striving for.

“SOFO was operating from a temporary office in Woodstock and its museum was very staid and very regimental. There was no interpretation with it, and they hadn’t got the unique bits out of the collection. And I hope that’s what I’m good at.

“I may not have that military background or knowledge, but I think I know what people want to see in a modern museum and how you can best relate that.”

Ursula was keen to avoid presenting the collections as a chronological history. Instead, with the help of a small team of staff and a band of enthusiastic volunteers, she has developed a series of thematic displays.

The emphasis is very much on personal stories, with related documents and objects, as well as children’s activities such as feely boxes, jigsaws and fun quizzes, all helping to bring Oxfordshire’s regimental past to life.

One of Ursula’s favourite parts of the job is hearing people’s stories and receiving personal objects.

“Lots of local people come in with their stories, and I feel a real sense of privilege that people are handing over to us precious photos and artefacts that are important to them, and they see us as a place that will look after them.

“Also, there’s some really lovely, romantic stories, which you wouldn’t expect when you come to a military museum.”

SOFO was officially opened by the Princess Royal in September 2014. The Heritage Lottery funded exhibition, Oxfordshire Remembers 1914-18, runs until August, with future plans including the launch of a children’s club in March, more family activities and projects, and a Royal Flying Corps exhibition.

For more information about the museum, visit sofo.org.uk