Lots of lovely schools October 19, 2009

Nearly half way through the term again and schools have been coming and making some show-stopping art work. So here’s the full unedited gallery from three of the sessions:  To the Skeleton, Draw to Explore and an insect research session…

Just a couple of weeks ago we went ‘To The Skeleton’ with Manchester Health Academy – we made negative scissor drawings, through-acetate drawings, and then mixed it all up.

Ewing School came and took over our Entomology stores for two afternoons and gave us some thoughtful insight on the new Nature Discovery displays.  Both groups even managed to squeeze in the time to make some breathtaking study-drawings using good old-fashioned pencil and paper – a classic combination!  They left us with lots of promises that they would come back and show us the sculpture work developed from their studies, so watch this space!

The Draw to Explore session with Tarleton High School seemed to develop it’s own ‘time’ theme, with the students drawing what they could see out of the tower window as well as what they discovered inside.  Maybe they’d been inspired by their research of artists who’ve previously made work at the museum:  Ilana Halperin, Jamie Shovlin, Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan, and Jordan Baseman.

Now all these artists can join the likes of Turner Prize nominated Lucy Skaer who also uses museum objects in her work.

The Go Between conference October 8, 2009

Just back at the museum for the first time since The Go Between conference in Cardiff and was fantastic to get stuck straight back in with two busy art sessions following the summer break and then doing lots of talking about it at the conference.  This morning started with AS students exploring the herbarium and then this afternoon I took another group to Entomology and then handled and drew some insects with them up in the lab – another hectic schedule behind the scenes at the museum then!  So it was great to be doing all the fantastic things that we’d been telling people about back in Cardiff.

It felt that Manchester was certainly on to a good thing at the conference which was centered around the idea that the artist can act as ‘go between’ for museums and audiences – although it soon became clear that the artist can take on many other roles and responsibilities in museums and that artists are not the only creative people in museums.  Plenty more questions were asked with varying degrees of seriousness,  such as:  who is ultimately responsible for the knowledge in museums?  who makes that knowledge?  could artists replace curators ?(!) how creative can museums be?  what does the visitor/audience/participant think of all this?  how might this mean communities can get more involved in museums?

Peter Jenkinson, the man responsible for Creative Partnerships and New Art Gallery Walsall also reminded us that ‘in between is a good place to be’.

The Go Between July 21, 2009

The secondary learning team have had our paper accepted for ‘The Go Between’ conference at National Museum Cardiff and ATRiuM on 9-11 September 2009.  University of Manchester Art History PHD student Jen Ashton and I will be writing and delivering the paper which stems from our work on Pathways and Progressions and from our work with engage’s enquire project.

The paper asks, how can art promote learning in workshops for secondary school students in museums with regard to its people, spaces and collections? Jen and I are co-writing the paper so we’re working hard to think about what’s important for each of us to include and to review the past three year’s research we’ve invested into this area of work for the Secondary Learning Team.

Our colleagues David Gelsthorpe and Leander Wolstenholme are also presenting at the conference and will tell their story from the curator’s point of view.  So watch out Wales, Manchester Museum is coming!

For more information or to book a place at the conference go to:  www.glam.ac.uk/cci

Recycled paper insects and poetry June 9, 2009

What better way to think about what ‘going green’ means to us than by making poetry from recycled words and sticking it onto the back of a recycled paper insect for it to scuttle or flutter away with?  That’s just what we did on Saturday and now here’s our chance to show you what we came up with.

To see more go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/enquiremanchester/sets/72157619400699553/

Hear what I had to say following the event on Saturday

Here’s how to make your own recycled insects and recycled poetry:

- have a close look at some insects – find one outside, come and take a look at ours on display at the museum or check our collections pages on the web

- take some recycled paper or card, glue or tape and a pair of scissors and just get experimenting – you might want to make your insect 2D, 3D, big or small

- now for the poetry – scan through your recycled paper (newspapers and magazines are perfect for this) and pull out words that mean something to you and what you’re thinking, or you might just think they sound nice

- then stick your words on the back of your insect however makes you happy

Tip – you can also have fun holding your insect in front of a projector or lamp to make it giant sized

Big Saturday – Go Green! June 2, 2009

This Saturday (6 June, 11-4) the lab on the 3rd floor of the museum will be transformed into an artist’s studio.  We’ll be taking over the whole space with paper butterflies, bees and beetles and setting them free to run away with our ideas.

After thinking about all the ideas around sustainability of our planet that will be going on all around the museum, we’ll have the chance to create something which develops our ideas and shares our thoughts with other people.

We’ll be asking the whole museum to help us out by supplying all the paper we’ll need to make paper poetry and creepy crawlies to carry it away.  Then the whole lot will be recorded and added to flickr for people around the world to see, enjoy and be inspired by.

Rounding up enquire project May 26, 2009

Headed down to London last Wednesday to go to a project sharing seminar for all the museums, galleries, teachers and artists who’d taken part in enquire around the country over the past  year.

Was great to hear what everyone had been up to and to bring the Curator of Secondary Learning and the artist who worked on the project along too.  We were the last to present our project so having the artist along to talk about her side of things really brought everything to life – especially as there were only two other artists presenting.

We also spent some time chatting to Angela Cowan from FACT in Liverpool (thanks to her helping us out with some technical issues with our presentation) and it was interesting to chat about our projects and what we shared dispite the differences between our venues.  Hope we can catch up again soon and maybe continue to learn more from each other in the future.

Reporting March 24, 2009

Submitted the enquire report last week.  Wow, it was a feat just to try and fit everything into a readable managable document.  I was really proud of all we had achieved and it was great to see the bigger picture and work ounderstand how everyone had worked together via their project diaries.

Both me and the teachers really benefited from having a consultant teacher around for the project.  He was a retired teacher who had the time and experience to reflect on the sessions, offer advice and provide a support for teachers during the sessions.  Through the consultant teacher’s presence I gained confidence in my approach to teachers knowing that I’d discussed any potential worries or problems with him.  One of the teachers said that having the consultant teacher around made her feel more relaxed because he understood how she was feeling and why she might feel stressed.  This reminded me how strange it must be for teachers to have other people coming in and ‘taking over’ their lessons.

The teachers we’ve worked with have been really supportive of two very open-ended and experimental projects and its made for a really exciting few months for them, for the artists, for the curators at the museum, for me and even the students as well!

Re:Curate Saturday 7 March 2009 March 12, 2009

Re:Curate saw  students from Levenshulme High School for Girls joining their teacher, Dena, Louise, John and myself in facilitating an immersive experience for visitors to the Egypt Gallery.  I was particularly impressed with the maturity shown by the students in speaking to visitors about their work and in delivering a series of powerful creative performance pieces such as ‘Another TV Show’.  This piece investigated the idea that, by repeated exposure through the media, people may be desensitized to seeing human remains.

These interventions were developed with the artist and the students over an eight week period.  The artist, Dena Bagi, has researched the museum since December, meeting up  for discussions with curators and researching the human remains debate.  Dena is interested in the role of experimental curatorial practice in interpreting collections and objects.  The students have taken part in a session with Cat Lumb, Lead Humanities Educator, around the question of human remains and investigated the use of contemporary exhibiting techniques in the museum’s Lindow Man exhibition.

From this the young people developed their own responses to human remains on display in the gallery and created interventions in the spaces.  This enriched the debate about the display of human remains by bringing their ‘voices’ into the spaces and challenging museum visitors to consider this sensitive issue for themselves.

How we see objects March 10, 2009

St Peter’s RC High School students came to the museum and chose objects to draw without looking at the labels, then they drew broken objects, and finally they tried to make sense of a bunch of items from the ethonography collections.  What was artist Paul Needham thinking when he asked them to do this?!  And what did the students get out of it?

The idea behind all this was that Paul thinks there’s more than one way to look at an object, from making a lassoo carved from wood to an ‘impossible’ elastic band formed around a fixed rail.

St Peter’s threw themselves into the challenge of deciphering the museum objects, coming up with a whole host of ideas for their possible uses and histories as well as agreeing with some of the labels given to them by the museum!

Make a space in your diary February 21, 2009

Students from Levenshulme High School for girls will be installing their interventions in the Egypt Gallery at Manchester Museum as part of  Sciencetastic Saturday -  FOR ONE DAY ONLY.  Don’t miss your chance to see what the students have been up to and find out how they change the way you think about the human remains on display.