I have decided to cancel this month’s Museums Showoff because of the situation with Covid-19. I would rather people didn’t put themselves at risk of infection through unnecessary rush hour travel and spending time in a crowded venue.

I am going to see if we can do some kind of online alternative instead and will let you know if I figure that out.

Either way, we should have a show on May 19th (fingers crossed risk from Covid-19 will be greatly reduced by then) so watch this space!

Apologies for the disappointing news.

Rachel

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 17 July, 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 £6 (+ 60p booking fee). Get one here: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/443914

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/

Adam Koszary – ‘look at this absolute unit’. This simple phrase and a photograph of a sheep reached millions of people around the world after going viral on Twitter. Hear about the surreal couple of weeks spent dealing with unexpected internet fame from the person at the Museum of English Rural Life behind the tweet.

Lalita Kaplish – What’s a museum website for? Most of us would say it’s there to promote the museum and to give visitors information about what they can expect when they visit. But the majority of website visitors may never visit the museum, so are we neglecting online audiences by focussing on the physical space? It’s time to rethink the museum on the web.

Noeleen O’Gorman – How to move a Museum! In 2018, the Musical Museum celebrated 10 years in their current building. Looking back over 10 years of history we uncovered the story of how the entire collection was transported from a leaky old church to where it is now. We’ll tell all at Museums Showoff.

Queerseum – We’ll be sharing our practice of Cultural Activism – from demanding a Queer Museum to popping up and reactivating queer history in institutions and on the streets. Featuring cultural activists Damien Arness Dalton,Dan de la Motte (Queer Tours of London), and Andrew Lumsden and Stuart Feather (Gay Liberation Front).

Merri Gordon & Anna Jackson – Work in museums and heritage? Ever tried speed mentoring? Or have no idea what that is but want to find out? We’ll have a preview of an upcoming speed mentoring event run by the London Emerging Museum Professionals group, in the works for September 2018. Find out what to expect and how to get the most out of speed mentoring; be the first to sign up as a mentee or mentor; or just come to enjoy #loveisland puns galore.

Sacha Coward – ‘Sacha engages with local diasporic communities in a multimodal fashion through intergenerational interactions around problematic themes within our collections…’ WTF does that even mean?! Sacha works at the National Maritime Museum and has a job title even he can barely say; Museums love big, grand, evasive words when they try to talk about things that scare them! In his set Sacha wants to explore what Museums really mean when they try to talk about race, gender, sexuality and politics.

Alice Procter – Alice has been running Uncomfortable Art Tours for a year, and is now officially hated by the Daily Mail! She’s here to recap a rollercoaster of museum heckling, (not) inventing institutional critique, problematic faves, displaying it like you stole it, and why she’s unwelcome in Whitby.

Hannah Cushion – The Art of Failing – Museum Educator Hannah Cushion has worked in museums, galleries and education for the last 10 years and is fed up of hearing ‘Is this right?’ and ‘I was never any good at art!’. What is failing and why is it so important? We’ve all failed at something and survived so why are we so scared of it and when did ‘Fail’ become such a dirty word?

Ellie Armstrong – Ever thought that science museums were a bit…..straight? Ellie and Damien Arness Dalton did, and started “Queering the Science Museum” as a guerrilla tour at the Science Museum London. Running every Saturday and Sunday in July at 4pm; the tour uses histories and stories to think more queerly about how we display STEM in the museum.

HOORAY!

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

Join us on Tuesday 22 May, 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 £6 (+ 60p booking fee), get one here: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/439003

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 here: http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/

Team Fatberg! – It’s the Shit Show! Get insider knowledge on the most talked about exhibition the Museum of London has ever created: Fatberg! Our expert panel will tell its story through crap we said in the media, and consider this conundrum: if Fatberg! was a musical, what would be its theme tune?

Anna  Spender – Did you know that croquet, not tennis, was the first sport to grace Wimbledon’s lawns?  Anna Spender, Collections Manager at Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, will be talking about their latest exhibition, ‘Through the Hoops: Croquet at Wimbledon’, celebrating The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club’s 150th anniversary this year.

Sara Boutall – Tutankhamun vs. Netflix – the changing landscape of museum visitation and what factors cultural institutions must take into consideration in order to increase visitor numbers and engagement

Leslie Ewing-Burgesse – Leslie does silly, surreal standup comedy. Tonight she’ll be telling you about one of the best museums in her hometown of Ottawa, Canada, and about the books she obsessively borrowed from the library as a child.

Professor Carl Bugenhagen, Director of Tyne & Wear Occult Practice & Psychical Research Facility – Beyond The Museum:Unlocking The Paranormal & Hidden Power of Objects. Professor Carl Budenhagen will be discussing the use of Psychics and Trance Mediums as a valid form of data collection and presenting findings from a recent public event at the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear where a psychic was used to find the lost histories of objects with unknown provenance.

Nick Sturgess – Nick will explore the weird, wonderful and frankly annoying aspects of curating a fairground collection and telling people why it doesn’t fit in any other museum category. This will entail pretty much everything you can think of as issues with collections management.

Tim Powell – Touchy-feely technology! Buzzwords like ‘immersive technologies’ generally make people think of screen-based visual experiences. Tim Powell will share some of the curious lessons learnt by Historic Royal Palaces in The Lost Palace and virtual reality experiments – into the emotional power of digital touch and sound (and smell?)

Sarah Dormer – Spare Tyre is taking a creative approach to heritage in order to reflect our diverse and rich history! As a 40-year old organisation we have a lot to cover, but how do we present information in a fun and accessible way…?

HOORAY!

It’s time for more museum-y fun, and omg, what an incredible show we’ve got for you! Join us on Tuesday 20 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 £6 (+ 60p booking fee). Get one here: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/432925

Taking to the stage for this extravaganza of wit & wisdom, objects & exhibitions 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/

Frances Sampayo – Do you find yourself waking up at 3am in a cold sweat wondering how visitors will interact with your new exhibition? Do you find yourself distracted by signage strategies whilst out and about? If you answered yes to these questions, then you might be living with Operations Brain. Frances reveals the signs and symptoms of this Ops-centric condition!

Bernard Donoghue – Bernard is the CEO of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, is the Mayor of London’s Culture Ambassador and a trustee of the Geffrye Museum. He’s also a lobbyist for the sector and will share gossip, lobbying tactics, insider info in a 9 minute ‘The Thick of It’ meets ‘The Crown”.

Anna Faherty – Between the lines: a ripping yarn of automation and gender power struggles unexpectedly embedded in a sleepy nineteenth-century volume from the shelves of the Wellcome Library.

Mike Harris – I’ll be talking about the perils of having an interesting job description on your twitter bio and how it can end up with a slot at Museums Showoff. I’ll also talk tech – specifically tech at the Royal Academy of Arts and the wide range of projects the developers here are working on. Expect everything from ‘the cloud’ through to digital signs.

Matt & Jess Turtle – Jess and Matt Turtle will share the story of how they set up the UK’s first Museum of Homelessness, documenting the twists, turns and the highs and lows.

Jason Webber – The (inevitable) Zombie Apocalypse is upon us! It could be the end of times? But wait, surely culture can save us? In which London Cultural Institution would it be best to survive the onslaught of the un-dead? Choose wisely or prepare for annihilation!

Miki Webb & Claire Madge – Museum Marathon is taking place on Sunday 15th April and raising money for Autism in Museums. Come listen to Claire Madge and Mikaela Webb (with Mar Dixon cheering on from afar) give an energetic run through of what to expect, how to take part and donate. So put on your trainers, don your sweatbands, put down your pint and limber up for Museum Marathon – 1 day, 20 km and over 30 London museums…

Joe Sullivan – The London Museums Group support and advocate for all Museum staff in London, and we are currently recruiting for new board members. I’ll be chatting through what London Museums Group does, the great opportunities its given me, and why you should join us!

Tim Powell – Combining VR with real-time motion capture to create visitor experiences at HRP! Full set details coming soon.

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 21 November, downstairs at The Phoenix. Doors open at 6.45pm, the show starts at 7.30pm. Tickets are £6 (+ 60p booking fee).

HOORAY!

It’s time for more museum-y fun, and omg, what an incredible show we’ve got for you! Join us on Tuesday 19 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 £6 (+ 60p booking fee). Get one here: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/415002

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/

Cynthia Adobea-Aidoo – How do you go about starting a learning programme for schools, families and adults in a building that hasn’t been open for almost 700 years? Don’t ask me! I’m still figuring it out. Come along to hear about collaborations and commiserations as I discuss the “Revealing the Charterhouse” project. Spoiler alert, I’m still working on the “Revealing” bit.

Mari Takayanagi – Did you know that in the early 19th century women could only watch debates in the House of Commons from a ventilator in the attic space above? And after that they were confined to a cage? In 2018 Parliament will be celebrating ‘Vote 100’, the centenary of votes for some women – find out what else its archives reveal about the suffragists, the suffragettes, and hear about the exciting plans for 2018.

Clair Le Couteur – Some artworks don’t just occupy museum spaces, but claim to *be* museums themselves. How can these fictive museums unsettle the relationship between things and labels in the museum, and why might that matter?

Hannah Tyler – The great @Horse_ebooks once tweeted “everything happens so much” and in terms of quantum physics they are pretty spot on because everything that is, was, and will ever be, is happening at this very moment. If history exists right now, what does that mean for museum spaces and our perception of time? 

Tom Flynn – Doing the things you like can sometimes lead to a job you love, but it’s not always a direct route or a smooth ride. I’d like to share some things I’ve learned on my journey from dropping out of university to becoming cultural heritage lead at an international tech startup.

Gemma Murray – The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, shown in Ice Age Art at the British Museum in 2013, is believed to be the oldest art object in existence. It features in arguments surrounding the history of Homo sapiens and predictions on AI and the posthuman. I’ll be talking about its ability to make us question where we come from and where we are going.

Alice Procter – Alice is an alliterative Australian art historian. After graduating and not knowing what to do with herself, she created The Exhibitionist, a podcast about galleries, and Uncomfortable Art Tours, a sightly secret programme exploring colonial legacies in British institutions. She’ll be talking about creating alternative narratives in museums, making people uncomfortable on purpose, and why kitsch is the key to a post-colonial world.

Arna Spek – For the last 7 years Arna has been working as part of the front of house staff before finally making the  move to another department. Join her as she closes this chapter for now by remembering 10 minutes of highlights of crazy, insane and hilarious visitor stories of years of welcoming Londoners into the Museum of London. What do you think is the weirdest question she had to deal with?