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Archive for June, 2010|Monthly archive page

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Happiness in south London

In happiness, what i'm reading on June 29, 2010 at 2:45 pm

I just came across a lovely blog which is quite close to my heart. It’s someone writing about happiness and food (two of my favourite things) and she lives just a few miles away from me. The Happiness Project is an online project with the aim of getting Londoners to ignore the horrid, expensive, dirty parts of our city and to share in all the amazing things there are to see, do – and eat – right on our doorstep. We don’t realise how lucky we are!

The writer also offers a series of ‘rules’ by which we can be more happy. Take a look at her blog and see what you think.

I’m hoping to be able to interview her for my ongoing research project into the nature of happiness. The aim of the research is to unpick what happiness means to us in a modern context and, given she’s using modern technology of blogging and she’s writing about London now, I think she’d make a great addition. Watch this space to see if I can persuade her to get involved ….

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New lease of life for Canterbury Beaney

In Museum [Insider], Museums, new content on June 22, 2010 at 9:18 am

The Canterbury what?

The Beaney Institute in Canterbury (named after its benefactor Dr James George Beaney) has had a museum at its town centre site for around 100 years. It’s about to have a major overhaul, to bring the building and museum up to date. In addition to an extended library and building conservation they are also adding an additional wing, full of lovley new gallery spaces.

There’s more about their project on the FutureBeaney website. And, as always, there’s an article about it on Museum [Insider] by yours truly.

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Bannockburn 700 years on

In Museum [Insider], Museums, new content on June 3, 2010 at 3:58 pm

The Scots are getting ready to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) in a few years. The two organisations which look after the battlefield (Scottish Heritage and the National Trust for Scotland) have combined forces on a project which will see the site reinterpreted for the public by the time of the anniversary.

The onsite heritage centre will be redeveloped, along with landscaping work in the area, conservation of key battlefield sites and new signage for the whole place. Architecture, lanscaping and interpretation contracts are all out to tender at the moment, but there’s a full review of the plans live in an article about Bannockburn on Museum [Insider]

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Fall of the Wall meets Stonewall

In Museums on June 1, 2010 at 12:21 pm

I’ve just started some editorial work on a really fast-burn exhibition project for the European Commission offices in London. It’s a photographic display opening in a few weeks called Fall of the Wall Meets Stonewall.

It’s a collection of pictures from gay pride marches across eastern Europe where the right to hold such marches has not been around as long as we’ve had it in the USA or the UK – in fact that fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet influence were huge catalysts for the development of gay rights in eastern Europe so there’s been a  huge swathe of activity in this area in recent years.

What’s interesting about some of the photographs is that many of the scenes of the marches are the same as those we see in photographs of anti-government protests and marches in the 1980s. A photograph of the rainbow flag waving in front of Ceausescu’s palace in Bucharest is a perhaps a peculiar image for those who can remember what live was like under Romania’s totalitarian state and definitely a pleasing one for gays and lesbians in Romania today.

I’ve been working with the exhibition’s curator to some up with an interpretation plan for the show. I’m going to be writing the copy for the panels and editing the labels/captions for the individual photographs. A bit of a learning curve for me, but great fun!

The exhibition is open 9-18 June at the European Commission offices, near Victoria.

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