It’s that time of year again when Dulwich Picture Gallery gets ready for the annual Gallery Quiz. Teams of six compete in the grand setting of the Gallery – surrounded by beautiful paintings in the famous enfillade – and see their scores projected onto a large screen at the end of the Gallery. There’s a piece promoting the quiz live on Dulwich OnView today.
Archive for 2009|Yearly archive page
Quiz at Dulwich Picture Gallery
In Dulwich OnView, Museums, new content on October 27, 2009 at 9:32 amBonnie Greer sets Nick Griffin right
In Museums on October 23, 2009 at 11:16 amLast night’s Question Time on BBC1 caused quite a stir, primarily because of the presence of Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party on the panel. He is an odious man and managed to show himself to be the complete and utter fool everyone knows him as, on national television. I’m pleased the BBC allowed him to be on the show. Giving him the chance to spout his nonsense in a primetime public arena, means we can all now openly criticise him for not only being misguided, but also wrong and stupid.
It was great to see Bonnie Greer on the panel as well. And well done to her for recommending that Griffin visit the British Museum to brush up on his ancient history. Watch the video of Bonnie putting Nick Griffin right on his history.
I worked on the interpretation for the Ancient Europe Gallery (Room 51) at the BM, to which Bonnie Greer referred. Do pop along and see the display if you’re interested. We used a moving map to show the migration of settlers onto the UK mainland after the last Ice Age. And there are objects in the display from the first hunter-gatherers and famers who inhabited Britain. Perhaps you’ll spot Griffin in there, brushing up on the history of migrating peoples.
Working with the British Library
In Museums on October 19, 2009 at 5:14 pmI’ve just started a really interesting piece of work with the British Library. They have two spaces at the St Pancras site which they use for temporary exhibitions. They have plenty of ideas about what they want to put on in that space – almost too many, in fact. So, I’m going to be working with them to them decide which ones to run with. I’m going to be running some interviews with members of the public and also chairing some focus groups for them, with targetted audiences, analysing visitors’ initial reactions to the exhibition ideas and trying to gauge whether there is a ‘market’ for some of their ideas more than others.
It’s going to be happening throughout November, so I’ll be spending a lot of time in their lovely building. And probably their cafe too!
They have a lovely looking photography exhibition opening next week called Points of View.
Have we solved the problem of Stonehenge?
In Museum [Insider], Museums, new content on October 15, 2009 at 11:05 amIn many ways, I don’t want to get started on Stonehenge. It’s been a long, hard struggle for the many organisations involved, but after nearly twenty years of wrangling and non-decision making it looks like English Heritage and their partner organisations (such as the National Trust) are ready to move forward with Stonehenge.
Years ago, it was agreed by the many stakeholders that the A344 road should not pass so closely to the stones for reasons of conservation. It’s been a long time in the planning, but everyone has now agreed that the road will be moved and how visitors will interact with the stones there. Plans submitted to Wiltshire Council now indicate a bespoke visitor centre, set into the hillside, 1.5 miles from the stone circle. There visitors will be able to learn about the historic landscape in which Stonehenge sits – it’s huge and stretches for miles – and then get into road trains which take them up to the stones.
The reason it’s taken so long os that there have been so many people involved in the decision-making process. Plus, with changing governments who see it as more or less of a priority than their predecessors, it’s been difficult to get any real leadership.
Everyone is now hoping that the plans are passed by Wiltshire Council. They will, of course, be undertaking their own consultation on the plans. But if they get the go-ahead, the visitor centre could be open in time for the Olympics.
There’s a piece analysing the plans and giving more context to the Stonehenge debacle on Museum [Insider].
Back in the classroom
In Dulwich OnView, Museums on October 12, 2009 at 5:02 pmI’ve had a great day today, working with Dulwich Picture Gallery and a couple of local schools. The Gallery are running a project which sees sixth-formers from two schools coming together to create a local online magazine about cultural life in the area. There’s an arts focus of course – it’s being paid for by an art gallery – but it’s thought that it will reflect more than just DPG.
They are using the free software from WordPress we use for Dulwich OnView and which I also use for this site.
I taught a session about online writing – how that differs from writing for traditional media and some helpful hints about writing in the world of the blogosphere. We’ll be following their progress on Dulwich OnView. Their magazine is due to go live in about a month of so.
New cultural quarter for Great Yarmouth
In Museum [Insider], Museums, new content on October 1, 2009 at 2:16 pmGreat Yarmouth is working on a really exciting project to turn a listed, but ignored, church building in the town centre into the hub of a new cultural quarter. It’s going to be turned into a theatre space, which will hopefully attract visiting production companies. They have big money for it, and big aims too. They also intend to renovate other lsited buildings in the area and get loads of arts organisations to move in.
Exciting times. There’s an article about the renovation of St George’s Chapel on Museum [Insider].
Wow, that was a fast six months
In happiness, Museum [Insider], Museums, new content on September 30, 2009 at 1:01 pmSo, it’s six months today since I left full-time employment and went it alone as a freelance writer. What have I achieved and what will the next six months have in store?
I’ve realised that I know a lot of things now I didn’t know in April. And they aren’t things I necessarily expected to learn as I went along. That’s what’s been so much fun about this lifestyle I’ve chosen for myself – things change, work (paid and unpaid) comes along and networking is still as important as ever. And the nature of writing for the web is continually evolving as well – new technologies and tools come along. I didn’t even know what twitter was six months ago!
The great thing about publishing quite a lot of online material is that I’ve been able to see the results of my work pretty much instantly, and I’ve also been able to solicit feedback from others about what I’ve been writing. Other projects are yet to be published, but will come into the public domain in the next few months.
A quick summary of my first six months as a real writer:
I co-authored the content for the British Museum’s new multimedia guide (like an audio guide but with pictures, video and interactive games). I also wrote an audio-described tour of the Parthenon galleries at the BM for visually impaired visitors. Both of these will go live in December 2009.
For the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, I’m writing a new audio tour for the entire museum. That’s a work-in-progress at the moment, but I need to move fast on it as it opens to the public in late November 2009.
A lot of web articles have appeared all over the place. I wrote 23 features articles for Museum [Insider], the online magazine for suppliers to the heritage sector in the UK. There were also 14 new articles for Dulwich OnView, an online magazine about life in and around south London. And using this website as a promotions tool, I’ve created exactly 100 posts – the latest one just this morning.
There were a few random pieces of work as well. I’ve written content for a local film-maker’s website; edited text for the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery website; scribed some pieces for an international travel blog; chaired a strategic direction workshop for Kingswood House and even edited an academic conference paper on the nature of discipleship amongst the evangelical Christian movement in the UK!
I continued work on my ongoing research project into the nature of happiness and what it means to us today. It’s had to take a bit of a back seat for the moment while I focus on paid work, but the idea is to start firing a book proposal off to publishers in the near future. My research notes find their way on to this website every so often.
Up next, I’m going to be doing some consultancy for a large heritage venue in London – secret as yet, but news coming soon. I’ll be soliciting responses from their visitors about ideas for potential future exhibitions. The regular pieces for M[I] and DOV will continue as well as some happiness research and there’s some more audio writing in the pipeline. And I’m going to teach a workshop on online wrting for a local school.
What will the next six months yield? Will I have a book deal? Will more people read me?
Who knows, but I’m certainly having a ball right now.
Jurassic motivations
In Museums, what i'm reading on September 30, 2009 at 10:21 amWe had a great meeting of the King’s College London museums reading group yesterday. It’s a forum where academics working in social aspects of museums studies – and educational theory – get together with professionals from the museum sector and discuss the latest papers relating to our work and research. We take a different topic each time – this latest gathering was devoted to four studies of motivations amongst museum visitors.
We read:
The effect of visitors’ agenda on museum learning (Falk, Moussouri, Coulson, 1998) – still one of the most quoted papers on motivational theory. Breaks down the idea that education and entertainment are not indeed opposite ends of the visiting spectrum, but are actually continua which run in parallel.
Motivational factors and the visitor experience: a comparison of three sites (Packer, Ballantyne, 2002) – an Australian study which moves on to the next step and calls for ‘a common theoretical foundation for interpretation in museum other informal learning settings’.
Personality and motivation in visitor satisfaction (Yalowitzm 2002) – a PhD summary comparing cognitive and sensory needs and experiences in three Coloardo visitor attractions.
Accessing and incorporating visitors’ entrance narratives enchances guided museum tours (Tsybluskaya, Dodick, Camhi, 2009) – a great piece of research looking at getting museums visitors talking about a subject before they encounter it, in order that a guided tour might dwell on their expectations.
We talked around these and other pieces of research and ended up looking at examples of museum practice which take us out of our comfort zone – which challenge not only our motivations, but also our expectations of a visit. I’m so pleased we got to discuss the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, a long time favourite of mine where the very notion of a museum is broken down. I’ve flicked through the guide book again this morning and I still don’t really understand what it’s all about. It’s just brilliant.
