HELLO LONDON!

It’s time to kick off a new season of museum fun with even more behind-the-scenes tales, intriguing insights and amazing projects. And OMG, what an incredible show we’ve got for you!

Join us on Tuesday 30 September, downstairs at The Slaughtered Lamb, where our brilliant performers will entertain, intrigue and astound you. Doors open 7pm. Entry is free, but we will be collecting on the door for our charity of the month. We suggest a donation of £5.

Showing off their all round museum-y amazingness will be:

Steve Cross – A man who knows his geek from his nerd, Steve is your compère for the evening, telling jokes and keeping everyone to time.

David Di Duca & Ross Cairns – What really happens at museums during the dead of night? The team behind After Dark tell the tale of when the robots took over Tate Britain and revealed the galleries at night to the world.

Robert Bidder – What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ingested? What would your Superpower be? Where would you go in a time machine? These are just some of the weekly questions we’ve asked our visitors and twitter followers over the last year. Once I’ve decided what the best answers are, I draw a big picture of them on Wellcome Collection’s gallery wall and try my best to make it as daft or disgusting as possible.

Carole Souter – Every curator knows just what they’d buy if they had a (modest) pot of gold to spend. Collecting Cultures made some of those dreams come true – this is what some lucky curators did with their pot.

Mark Dennis – Brothers and sisters, knights and nobles. Have you ever taken tea with a daughter of the Phoenix? Had a pint with a Buffalo or paraded with a Forester? If not then you probably don’t know about the rich fraternal history of the UK. I’ll give you a whirlwind tour of a museum collection from a world where royalty wear aprons, workers have noble titles and women call each other brother.

James Lattin – A short introduction to the Museum of Imaginative Knowledge, including key items from its collections as well as a report from its recent tour around the UK. The Museum focuses on objects and information that you would not find in more authoritative institutions.

Debbie Challis – Confessions of an Institutionphobe. A self help session to ease my Foucauldian masochism caused by my instinctive distrust of museums and institutions that ‘produce knowledge’, although I am myself wedged into the posterior of institutional knowledge production.

Rupert Acton – A selection of readings from 18 pieces of writing responding to 18 objects from the Horniman Museum’s Anthropology Collection. Using a research led approach, objects from around the world are explored from the perspective of a lifelong Londoner, there will be poetry, prose and at least one joke.

Gregory Akerman – In the early 1900s, the Smithsonian Museum was accused of covering up all evidence of a race of giants in an effort to undermine centuries of religious and mythic speculation. Gregory will use this tale to explore the responsibility of museums to keep themselves free from both mistakes & lies – but Gregory will do this with jokes and a frankly insulting lack of research.

Naomi Campbell – I’ll be showing off the most innovative, playful and anarchic garden in the National Trust’s cannon – how we did it, why we did it and why a Tudor knot garden just wouldn’t do!

TICKET LINK

Museums Showoff, the cabaret-style night for all those who work in and love museums, will be at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Tuesday 10 June starting 7.30pm, where a stellar cast of museum talent will reveal what REALLY goes on in museums!

If you want to hear intriguing insights, get the low down on amazing projects and glean all the behind-the-scenes gossip, this is the show for you! Taking to the stage for this extravaganza of wit and wisdom, objects and exhibitions will be:

Steve Cross – former curator and your compère for the evening, Steve likes to demonstrate his love for museums by telling jokes and wearing silly t shirts.

Paolo Viscardi – Beyond the Walrus: A tale of rivalry, death, zombies and reconciliation in the secret world of the Horniman Museum’s stores.

Rosie Clarke – I’ll be telling stories about Swansea Museum’s connection to water, featuring Swansea Jack the lifesaving dog, and what happened when artist Amy Sharrocks persuaded the citizens to fall into the sea as part of her Museums at Night “I Want To Fall Day Trip”. I’ll be going to Swansea to follow what happens, but will I end up in the water myself?

Dan Schreiber – co-creator and producer of Radio 4’s Museum of Curiosity will tell us about imaginary museums.

Katherine Curran – “Heritage Smells or The Terrible Fate of Tropical Ken”. Delivered entirely in verse, this will be both a description of my research on the conservation of historic plastics and an account of the dreadful things that happened to a Ken doll who found himself in one of UCL’s laboratories.

Roald Dahl Museum storytellers – Wondercrump interactive regaling from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes by two of the very best storytellers from The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. Previously described as ‘mad-cap’, ‘high-octane’ and capable of whipping the audience into a frenzy (OK, so most of them were eight years old…) it’s time to prepare to be Dahl-lighted!

Corrinne Burns – At the Science Museum we encourage visitors to leave comments about our exhibits. We get feedback from scientists, museum fans, critics and others… Tonight, I’ll take you on a nine-minute tour of some of the best!

Rebecca Mileham & Dea Birkett –  Sharpen your pencils, it’s time to bring an end to terrible museum text that’s long, boring or basically meaningless. Writers Dea Birkett and Rebecca Mileham share the latest examples from their collection of terrible museum text, and ask why we let museums get away with it.

Lucy Inglis – These are exciting times for museum visitor experiences! I’ll talk about my work with museums & galleries to create new events, including pub crawls debating the rise of philanthropy, LGBT history workshops and walks discussing eighteenth century identity.

Mark Carnall – Everyone who works in museums is in it together right? Sometimes art and science curators can seem worlds apart. Art is often synonymous with ‘culture’ but science museums are more popular with visitors. I’ll ask why can’t we just all get along and share the best of both worlds.

Tickets for the gig are £7 and are available from the Bloomsbury Theatre ticket website or in person at the box office (where there’s no transaction fee). All proceeds are going to Arts Emergency who offer mentoring, advice & support for 16-19 year olds from diverse backgrounds who want to do an arts or humanities degree … just the kind of qualification you need to work in a museum!

This gig is suitable for people aged over 16 years old.

It’s May! The sun is out, the sky is blue and we have a night of amazing museum-y fun lined up!

We’ve teamed up with with the folks at the Museums + Heritage Show for a special post-Show gig. Join us on Wednesday 14th May downstairs at the Archangel, Kensington High Street, W8, where our line up of top museum talent will entertain, intrigue and amaze you. Doors open 6.30pm. Entry is free, but we will be collecting on the door for our charity of the month. We suggest a donation of £5.

Taking to the stage for this extravaganza of wit and wisdom, objects and exhibitions will be:

Steve Cross – your compère for the evening, keeping things to time, mucking about and poking fun at museums.

Stella Duffy & Sarah-Jane Rawlings – Arts and sciences, participants as activists and audience as makers – Fun Palaces offers all this and more. On October 4/5 this year 75+ Fun Palaces will pop up across the UK and internationally in museums, parks, libraries – wherever the community wants them. Tonight, as a taster – The 9 Minute Mini Fun Palace!

Matthew Ward – Broadcaster and edutainer, Matthew Ward, has suffered and died in ‘Horrible Histories’, and lived and thrived on history from childhood. Find out about the strange, silly and sinister experiences he’s had in museums and heritage properties.

Michele Fuirer – “Coming here has been very important for me because although I have lost so much language, I am learning to see”. I will describe a long term project for people with aphasia run by the community learning team at Tate Modern and show a short film made in which Michael Hussey describes some of the ways his experience has been transformed by looking at art.

Diana Pearce –  A presentation about the #FlashmobScience project which aims to highlight the scientific links of historic places/historic objects within a museum or organisation through talks, demonstrations and question & answer sessions. It will be fun, I am sometimes known to turn up in some sort of costume!

Stephen Wolstenholme – In Here Today, Obsolete Tomorrow, Stephen Wolstenholme tells how he is creating a mobile museum of obsolete technology in an ex-NHS vehicle.  So put away your touch screens, get nostalgic for your old gadgets, and hear about the challenge of designing, operating, funding and exhibiting a private, travelling museum.

Selina Pang – Getting Behind The Glass: the trials and tribulations of photographing iconic museum objects for our iPad app and how we’re using this tech to bring the museum to your gadgets. Includes genetically modified sheep, a space capsule experience and lots of nights at the museum. Let me take you on Journeys of Invention…

Chris Walker – From the mouths of babes; the outstanding reaction of schoolchildren to the new Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre. Just how fired-up do you think this age group can get about a battle 700 years ago? Let’s see…

Mary Godwin – A blatant promo for some of the South West’s museums, with a scientific twist.

Hooray! It’s spring! There’s sunshine and blue sky and flowers…and another night of amazing museum-y fun!

Join us on Tuesday 1st April, downstairs at The Slaughtered Lamb 34-35 Great Sutton Street, EC1V 0DX, where ten brilliant performers will entertain, intrigue and amaze you. Doors open 7pm. Entry is free, but we will be collecting on the door for our charity of the month, the Choir With No Name, which uses music to help homeless people get their lives back on track. We suggest a donation of £5.

Showing off their all round museum-y awesomeness will be:

Steve Cross – your compère for the evening, keeping things to time, mucking about and poking fun at museums.

Tim Dunn – Extreme Trainspotting: why the war-torn country of Sierra Leone really needed a railway museum.

Carla Valentine – It’s What’s Inside That Counts! A humorous look at death by foreign object insertion, using objects from Barts Pathology Museum.

Sam Fieldhouse – Archiving Music Without Any Music: an ex-teacher’s baptism into a world of well-meaning widows, opposing opinions and extensive ephemera.

Stacy Hackner – Postcards were an essential form of communication from the late 19th to mid-20th century. This was also the heyday of anti-Semitism, leading to the formation of this curious collection that’s in need of an appropriate home.

Mary Rose Gunn – I’ll be talking about Two Temple Place, London’s first exhibition venue dedicated to showcasing highlights from regional collections.

Dave O’Brien – What’s the value of museums? I’ll talk about how we value museums in public policy, how we use a range of ideas about value that we possibly shouldn’t and why we do this. There might even be some suggestions of how to make the value of museums a little bit clearer!

Jenni Fewery, Bryony Morgan & Christina Hink – Don’t Lose Your Head! A gruesome glimpse at the plaster cast of a murderer and the pseudoscience of phrenology.

Jon Ablett – Release the Kraken – from mythical monsters to a marvellously modern mollusc! A guide to what we know (and don’t know) about the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, and how museum specimens have increased our knowledge of this and other cephalopod species.

Martin Sach – Museums can be great platforms for artists. The London Canal Museum has considerable experience of hosting art shows, and Martin Sach will draw lessons from this experience from the museum perspective.

We’re back for 2014! It’s going to be ace! We’ve planned loads of gigs so that even more amazing museums people can tell us behind-the-scenes stories and incredible projects. AND we’ve got a fab new venue.

We’re kicking things off on Tuesday 4 February, downstairs at The Slaughtered Lamb  34-35 Great Sutton Street, EC1V 0DX. Doors open 7pm. Entry is free, but we will be collecting on the door for our charity of the month, National Youth Arts Trust, which provides access to the performing arts for young people from non-privileged backgrounds. We suggest a donation of £5.

Lining up to astound, entertain and enlighten you with their tales from the museum world will be:

Steve Cross – a man who eats deep-fried gherkins for kicks.* He is also your compère for the evening: telling jokes, introducing acts and keeping things to time.

Kate Tyte – The totally unorthodox guide to museum archives! Featuring robots, Nicholas Cage, Indiana Jones and beards!

Liberate Tate – A love triangle: Tate, BP and us. What we love, what we hate, and why we want to Liberate Tate.

Nick Booth – I’m a curator at UCL where I look after the corpse of everyone’s favourite moral philosopher: Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon. I’ll be talking about what being his curator is like, some of the work that involves and discussing some of the myths and legends that have grown up around him.

Lowri Jones – A day in the life of a Collections Storage Assistant. I’ll be talking about what moving 26,000 objects into a new building for the British Museum actually entails, and looking at some of the weird and wonderful objects that we have found buried in long-forgotten corners of the stores.

Erica McAlister – My desk is covered in maggots. My post contains maggots. My research often focuses on maggots. So often the focus of revulsion I will chat about what they are and why they’re so important. Fear not, I will bring along some of the NHM maggot collections and show how they have helped answer very important questions.

Phil Loring – Phil Loring, Curator of Psychology at the Science Museum, will describe how two extraordinary larger-than-life models of the brain have pursued, delighted, and tormented him over the past year and a half.

Natasha Powers – I’ll be using my 9 minutes to tell the story of the archaeological excavation which inspired a recent Museum of London exhibition. A tale of 19th century medical and scientific inquiry, and of two Williams, one a respectable clergyman, the other a resurrectionist with a formidable wife.

David Mentiply – We walked, and talked, our way to 26 museums in one day to raise money for Guide Dogs UK. Find out what happened in this whistle-stop talk about the Museum Marathon day!

Sarah Mahood – I’ll be talking about the Horniman Museum’s loans project Object in Focus. We loan to museums, libraries and others – what makes it easy to borrow our objects?

Dave O’Brien – What’s the value of museums? I’ll talk about how we value museums in public policy, how we use a range of ideas about value that we possibly shouldn’t and why we do this. There might even be some suggestions of how to make the value of museums a little bit clearer!

*Do not try this at home. Or anywhere else. Really. They’re disgusting.