HELLO LONDON!

It’s time for lots 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 24 March, downstairs at The Slaughtered Lamb, where our brilliant performers will entertain, intrigue and astound you. Doors open 7pm, with the gig starting at 7.30pm. Entry is £5, get your tickets here: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/311510 All the money (apart from the booking fee) will be going to Paris Youth Group, the only support in Newham for LGBTQ young people and which is currently in danger of closure.

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

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

Eli Bligh-Briggs & Hannah Steele – Mind the diversity gap. London Transport Museum’s award winning apprentices talk cake, buses and self-worth. Explore their 12 month journey innovating stuff, trying to understand museums and empowering others to make their own tea.

Sharon Robinson – Toxic Tales. Museum stuff that might kill you…the things they don’t teach you at conservation school. This set will be a quick spin through the world of dangerous collections management featuring arsenic birds, guns, bombs and radioactive pants!

Simon Watt – Simon will be talking about why the Natural History Museum’s dodo deserves to be an icon, in spite of being a distinctly lack lustre bird.

Helena Copsey – Paintings in Hospitals is a charity dedicated to using visual art to create environments that improve the health and wellbeing of people across the UK. Helena will talk about its fascinating art collection and the benefits of creative engagement.

Harry Deansway – Ever wondered where the phrase free time comes from? How much time is there? Where has the time gone? I started writing this description six hours ago. Harry Deansway will be showing you the time of your life, quite literally, as he talks you through the history of clocks and watches.

Stella Wisdom – I’ll be talking about Off the Map, an annual videogame design competition for UK Higher Education students, which challenges them to create videogames and text adventures using digitised British Library maps, texts, illustrations and sounds, as creative inspiration.

Simon Cane – I say conservator, you say conservationist!  Conservators are often misunderstood, misinterpreted and even misrepresented in the media but yet they all that they do is for the benefit of visitors and collections isn’t it?  Simon will consider the how conservators and their actions are presented and communicated through the media, if they should care and what, if anything, they should do about it.

Hannah Bishop & Marie Klimis – Making art happen in a museum & garden: how the Horniman Museum is getting help to reveal its hidden worlds.

Hello London!

Do you like museums?

Do you like fun?

If the answer to either of those is yes, then you’re our kind of person!

Museums Showoff is back at the Slaughtered Lamb on 3 February 2015 with more amazing museum people who’ll regale you with behind-the-scenes stories and divulge the details of incredible projects. Doors open 7pm, with the gig starting at 7.30pm. Entry is £5, get your tickets here: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/305525. ALL the money will be going to Headway, which gives help and advice to individuals & their families after brain injury.

Strutting their museum-y stuff on stage, will be:

Steve Cross – your compère for the evening. He collects geeky glasses and geekier jokes.

Sarah Cox – Barts Pathology Museum has a lot of brilliant and terrifying things in it, including the skull of the only man to ever assassinate a British Prime Minister, and a torch found up someone’s bum. Event volunteer & ex-PR Sarah explains why she’s obsessed.

Jack Ashby – Bone Idols! This year the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL is undertaking a huge conservation project to preserve 39 of their biggest, rarest and most significant specimens. It involves deconstructing a massive rhino, saving the world’s rarest skeleton, dangling a seal from the ceiling and accidentally promoting unhelpful museum stereotypes to the world’s media.

Kenny Webster – Why we should stop trying to give visitors what they want! Our visitors tell us what they want every day, through all manner of media. How much should we listen to these requests and recommendations though and is there a smarter way of approaching visitor feedback?

Sara Wajid – Ever wondered what Black museum workers talk about when whites aren’t listening? Well I’m not telling. But I will tell you what the museum scene looks like from my rare perspective as a ‘non-white’ senior manager at a national and how Museum Detox (the social for ‘BAME museum professionals who occasionally tire of being one of the few’) made it funner.

Nick Harris – MuseumCraft: how to deal with success (and confusion) before you’ve actually done anything. One post on Reddit. One three-day holiday. Only 20 builders needed…. So why are there 1000+ people messaging the British Museum about Minecraft, why aren’t you answering your emails, and who is Anus-27? This is the true story of a little idea that got a bit out of hand.

Jack Denham – I’m going to talk about some of the research I’ve done at crime museums in the US and UK as part of my PhD about people who are fascinated by murder, and dying, and dead bodies. I will be ‘showing off’ some ‘muder-abilia’ (not for the faint hearted), and briefly positing some ideas about the ways in which crime is represented in educational spaces.

Alastair Brown – I’ll be talking about museum ethics, politics and the worst advert you’ve never seen. I’ll also tell you a bit about the work of the Museums Association and how to get involved.

Giles Abbott – Storyteller and voice coach Giles Abbott shows how a good story can transform a museum, whether it’s about a local or national museum, an individual exhibit or an entire wing!

Bhavani Esapathi – Our digitally saturated world offers entirely new narratives for museums & galleries. I’m going to explore one of the exciting ways of using them.

Get your tickets to see them: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/305525

A LIMITED NUMBER OF TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE DOOR

It’s November, the clocks have gone back, it’s raining and there is the impending doom of terrible secret santa presents at the office party.

But never fear! If you love museums and archives we have something to cheer you up!

Join us downstairs at The Slaughtered Lamb on Tuesday 2 December for lots of museum-y fun, intriguing insights and all the behind-the-scenes gossip! Doors open at 7pm. This time we are selling TICKETS. They are £5 + 50p booking fee and ALL the money (apart from the booking fee) will be going to Solace Women’s Aid, which helps women & children affected by domestic & sexual abuse.

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 and mucking about.

Melanie Vandenbrouck – “What on earth do (art) curators do?”, I often get asked, by puzzled members of the public and bemused colleagues alike. I’ll be talking about my curatorial experience in institutions small and big, to share some rabbit-in-the-headlight moments, the trepidation of stepping out of my comfort zone, and the variety of things I get to do, some more marvellously odd than others.

Ian Tester – A gentle canter through how we put millions of pages of #oldnews online, but more importantly, the many, varied and surprising ways people are using them. We like to think of ourselves as the Newspaper Liberation Front: we rescue old newspapers from libraries and put them an iPad away from anybody.

Marianne Mulvey –  Is there a place for irreverence in a space of reverence? I believe so, but do Tate Britain’s members agree? My talk tells the story of using queer performance to open up new ways of being and behaving in the museum, and gives you some honest reactions.

Martin Croser – I’ll be talking about the Hunterian Museum and it’s fascinating collection of cadavers, entrails, viscera, carrion, severed limbs, scalpels, hacksaws, catheters, claw hammers and pickled sparrows testicles. I’ll also be looking at why (in retrospect) it probably wasn’t the best place to go on a first date.

Laura Crossley – Workforce Diversity: A Plea to End the Handwringing and Start Doing. How long do we have to wait for the museum sector to address its lack of workforce diversity? One hundred more angry conference talks? One million more Twitter outbursts? I, for one, cannot take any more (and neither can Twitter). If you can’t either, pledge to join me in my mission to force the sector to stop the handwringing and start DOING.

Tom Flynn – A look at the circumstances that lead to the British Museum on Sketchfab and some of the outcomes of the project. In light of this experience and as more and more museum content goes digital, how best might this be presented to a modern audience?

Dan Schreiber – Museum-y musings from the one of the brains behind Radio 4’s Museum of Curiosity.

Katherine Hudson – the Art Fund has helped museums to show off their amazing collections and everything they do since 1903. I’ll tell you how to get involved.

PLUS ONE MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED!

A LIMITED NUMBER OF TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE DOOR

 

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.