HOORAY!

It’s time for lots more museum-y fun, and omg, have we got an AWESOME line up!

Join us on Tuesday 19 November, downstairs at The Phoenix, where our brilliant performers will entertain, astound and intrigue you! Doors open 6.45pm, show starts 7.30pm. Tickets are £7 (+ 70p booking fee), get one from We Got Tickets.

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

Naomi Paxton – actor, magician, expert on suffrage plays and owner of an inflatable duck costume, Naomi will be your compere for the night! Find out more about our multi-talented MC here: http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/

Zeynep Kussan & Matt Williams – Zeynap and Matt from the Curating London team at the Museum of London are spilling the tea about the projects they’ve been working on over the last year. Curating London is a four year contemporary collecting and community engagement programme where Londoners have their say!

Sarah Jaffray – Sarah is tired of the blockbuster museum show formula and how it reinforces western, patriarchal notions of genius. She’ll share how a drawing project with contemporary artists has challenged and changed the stories of ‘Old Master’ art in the collection of the British Museum, impacting the ways its curated and exhibited.

David Hingley – Surely front of house teams have time to do … just one more thing? They’re only standing around with radios after all. Find out why we are sometimes stressed, always busy, and can feel like the donkey in Buckaroo at times.

Alfie Meek – I will be talking about my time as a trainee at two London museums and how I have dealt with the wired and wonderful world of museum work. From shaking ambassadors hands to dealing with a colleague that has refused a dukedom.

Mari Takayanagi – In 2018 Parliament celebrated ‘Vote 100’, the centenary of votes for (some) women – one of the most important anniversaries in our democratic history. Mari reflects on the busiest year of her life, in particular the challenges and opportunities in delivering a major public exhibition with historic objects in a 900 year-old hall, under the glare of media attention.

Eddie Johnston – What I learned working in museums for seven years (and not getting as far as I hoped). It’s a classic story of boy leaves university, boy gets job in museums, boy works there for seven years and then leaves the sector. But did he learn anything from this? Eddie will talk through his highs and lows working with visitors at national museums, as well as sharing some super secret, but legally safe, behind the scenes stories.

Sacha Coward & Amy Jefford – Medi-QUEER-val Re-GAY-ssance! Two queers walk into a pub to discuss genderbending monks and sodomy in Game of Thrones…Amy and Sacha have been chatting about starting an exhibition on LGBTQ+ experiences during the Middle Ages with the support of the Queer Britain project. Join us for a whirlwind tour of medieval queerness and laugh at the way people used to draw unicorns!

Hooray! We’re back for MORE MUSEUM-Y FUN!

We’re kicking off our 9th season with an incredible show packed with top museum talent.

Join us on Tuesday 17th September, downstairs at The Phoenix, where our brilliant performers will reveal behind-the-scenes stories, intriguing insights and amazing projects. Doors open 6.45pm, show starts 7.30pm. Tickets are £7 (+ 70p booking fee), get one from We Got Tickets.

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

Naomi Paxton – she acts, she does magic, she’s an expert on suffrage plays AND she’s your compere for the night! Find out more about our multi-talented MC here: http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/

Laura Hutchinson & Binita Dave – Lights, camera, EXECUTION! Getting BE-HEAD of the filming game with top tips from the Tower of London.

Vernon Rapley – I’ll be enthralling, intriguing or most likely horrifying the audience, by exposing the level of security surveillance made possible by modern technology. I’ll ask the audience to consider the balance between protection and intrusion and when the line is being crossed?

Tom Hopkins & Louise McAward-White – Fair Museum Jobs tackles the good, bad and WTF of museum recruitment. Join Tom and Louise for a journey into the confusing and inconsistent heart of the jobs market; and find out who’s in, who’s out and what we can all do to make museum employment a better place.

Michael McHugh – Michael, heritage worker from the North of England will be talking about Museum SNAFUs (that’s Situation Normal All F***ed Up), Museum FUBARs (F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition) and how not to get ahead in Museums.

Elizabeth Dearnley – Elizabeth’s work on fairy tales and folklore sometimes takes her into the realms of the uncanny. Join her as she discusses some of the creepiest things she’s encountered in museums.

Scott Keir – Are museums catering for all visitors? Scott is increasingly intolerant of museum café menus clashing with their vision and inclusion policies, and has a smorgasbord of suggestions to digest.

Rosie Clarke – Culture24 describes their new Emerge Festival of London museum Lates as “Night at the Museum meets Glastonbury” – but how do you develop a whole new festival from scratch? Well, this one involves more than 40 venues, numerous partnerships and new ways of working. Rosie Clarke share some behind-the-scenes insights into bringing together London’s most electrifying new talent with its most iconic venues to delight a whole new audience!

Dan Hicks – Dan’s current Art Fund Headley Fellowship looks at the (in)visibility of colonial violence in the permanent displays of the Pitt Rivers Museum. In this contribution he will share some of the objects and stories that the project is revealing.

HOORAY! It’s time for MORE MUSEUM-Y FUN!

We’ve lined up top museum talent to entertain, astound and intrigue you! Join us on Tuesday 19 March, downstairs at The Phoenix, where our brilliant performers will reveal behind-the-scenes stories, intriguing insights and amazing projects. Doors open 6.45pm, show starts 7.30pm. Tickets are £7 (+ 70p booking fee), buy one from WeGotTickets.

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

Naomi Paxton – your compère for the night, Naomi is an awesome performer and an academic. She acts, juggles, does magic and is an expert on suffrage plays! Find out more on her website.

Jane Secker & Chris Morrison – The GLAMorous world of Copyright Literacy: creativity and games. Chris and Jane are copyright geeks and they on a mission to empower the GLAM sector about the importance of understanding copyright. They have already taken the world of libraries by storm using their approach of copyright games and creative approaches to teaching. Their key message is that developing copyright literacy is empowering and fun, and can help you unlock cultural heritage!  

Paul Duncan McGarrity – Paul is a stand up comedian archaeologist who has performed all over the UK in venues ranging from top comedy clubs to on top of Hadrian’s wall. He will be talking about castles and how to successfully attack them.

Kat Petersen – “When an acid-free box and someone’s lifetime of correspondence love each other very much…” If you’ve always wondered where archive collections actually come from but were afraid to ask, Kat will tell you all the unromantic details.

Nkechi Noel – Presents “Sweet Mother” a creative prose which offers a glimpse of the aspirations, hopes and dreams of Commonwealth citizens who embarked on a new life in the “Motherland”.

Adrian Steel – Playing Your Architectural Cards Right: post-war British Architecture… familiar family home or Festival Hall, car park or carbuncle, it is all around us, and yet its value is often underappreciated and misunderstood, its stories untold. How can we play our cards right to save and share the magnificent heritage collections documenting the building of modern Britain, before the concrete is crushed?

Andrea Solomon – From Brexit to the Pride parade, via an Uber with some elderly French ladies, volunteering at a museum can put you in all sorts of unexpected situations. V&A volunteer Andrea Solomon will tell you how she’s not getting paid enough to deal with this shit…and why she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sacha Coward – Can You F*ck A Mermaid?: Adventures in queer folklore! I think mermaids are awesome and I want to make you think they’re awesome too. But I also want to  gross you out with obscure maritime history, what’s not to love?!

Ellie Groom – Are television spots more trouble than they’re worth for museums? A television curator takes an irreverent look at TV in museums and museums on TV, the top 5 sins of telly producers, and the unique power of broadcast to engage museumgoers.

YAY!

We’ve got a new website!

Our producer, Rachel Souhami, has rolled up her sleeves, learned some html and CSS, et voilà! Welcome!

We think it has a better layout and navigation than the old one, but please let us know if there are any glaring errors or omissions.

I subscribed to the old blog, do I have to resubscribe to this one?

No…at least, we don’t think so! All subscribers should have been transferred to this blog. We will be posting the line up for our March 19 show in the next couple of days, if you’re a subscriber and don’t get a notification about that, please let us know. You can use our fancy new contact button at the bottom of this page 🙂