MAGPIE – Secondary Schools Speaking and Listening November 25, 2009

Just had a great day planning a new speaking and listening project with Chorlton High School’s Caroline Morgan, Newall Green High School’s Louise Mills, artists Naomi Kendrick and Fiona Muir (from WFA Media and Cultural Centre), along with help from Stephen Welsh (curator of living cultures), Julie from Manchester City Council, and Louise, Cat and I from the Secondary Learning Team.  As you can see from the big planning map we made, there were lots of ideas!  You should be able to double click to make it bigger

Plenty more to say about this but I’ll save it for another time… to be continued…

More Tree of Life November 25, 2009

Another great Tree of Life created last weekend… Inspired by Darwin’s voyage on HMS Beagle we collected animals from around the mammals gallery by drawing them and then added them to our own giant tree of life.

Drawing Inspiration 2009 with The Campaign for Drawing November 12, 2009

The Big Draw came to Manchester Museum for adults last month.  We used drawing to research, record and interpret the collections and explored the plant stores (or Herbarium) to make our own contemporary art work.

The Darwin Drawing Studio November 12, 2009

Throughout October half term we created a Darwin studio so we could used drawing to collect and record specimens from all around the museum and in both of our Darwin Extravaganza galleries.  People drew like the illustrators of Darwin’s time (a bit like Stephen’s illustrated entomology book that you can see in the exhibition), made imaginary creature shadows from memory paper cutting, and created a giant ‘tree of life’ linking lots of creatures together.

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.