The working life of Museum of London

I had some bite-sized staggered posts planned, but instead time/crashing computers/ going on leave has dictated a highlights post of what’s going on at the moment.

Firstly, we welcomed Nanny of the Maroons into our London, Sugar and Slavery Gallery. Queen Nanny is a gallery performance that Lynda  has been working on for a while now with the support of some fantastic and talented writers, musicians and advisors, not least Carlina who plays Nanny:

Queen Nanny looks out with Jamaican Plantation scene behind.

So far, what has been in the gallery is a working performance; script in hand, laptop on ahem, lap, and live acapella singing in place of our soundtrack. This was kept as a working performance so that we could invite active feedback from our Museum visitors and use this to fine tune our final Nanny character.

Discussion with audience members was really useful, the feedback we received was both positive and constructive, and mentioned pace, volume and content of the performance, which we were able to incorporate into rehearsals and revisions over the following weeks.

The final piece will be performed here at Docklands on Saturday at 2.30pm and 3.30pm, and Sunday 2.00pm and 3.00pm (entrance is free!), and will be scheduled into the events programme across both the Museum of London and Docklands sites over the coming months, as well as forming part of a larger Black History event we are planning in October. If you have any queries about Nanny, please feel free to get in touch.

The Crossing the Seas team take a turn in front of the Camera for a group interview.

Onto the Crossing the Seas project now,  and all the interviews have been carried out by Lynda and our expert team of young people from Newham, both behind the camera and conducting the interviews.

Lynda and Freddie set up the shot for an interview.

Lynda is finishing off the edits in order for them to be compressed and installed onto the touch screen interactive in the LSS Gallery, and I’m finishing off the transcripts so they can go into the Museum collections. I’m slightly word blind at this point, but the content of the interviews are so interesting that you don’t mind the length of time it takes to go through the entire dialogue.

I will update you once the interviews are installed, and would like to hear your feedback.

Finally, a beautiful splash of colour:

Detail from Price of Sweetness Bowl.

This year we have two batches of bowls to go into the Gallery; the set that have just gone into the Gallery have been made by a Elders group from the African and Caribbean Voices Association based in Stratford. This was a Women-only group who worked with Historian Angelina Osborne and Ceramicist Licy Clayden to create these beautifully colourful pieces.

The next set of bowls to go in have been made by families visiting Docklands over the half-term, who were inspired by the words of creative writer and performer Breis. While simple in design, the bowls have been decorated with creative and crafty phrases and slogans. When they’re in I’ll put up some images.

I’ll leave you with this lovely detail of a Caribbean Sunset, and don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the Mixtape…….

If so, we would like to hear from you!

Over at the Museum of London Docklands, Lynda (Community Access Officer) and I have been working in partnership with students and staff from Newham Community Links to prepare a programme of video interviews. This project forms part of a series of community involvement projects that are currently underway.

The young people involved in this project have been commissioned to research, organise and film interviews on the theme of ‘the Children of the Windrush Generation’. This will explore the experiences of London-born adults with Caribbean parents, documenting their memories of childhood, attending school and growing up in London during the 1960s,1970s and 1980s.

The final interviews will be installed into a permanent touch-screen display in our ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’ Gallery. We currently have some great people lined up to interview, but are still looking for more interviewees. If you would like to take part, please contact us here: crossingtheseas@museumoflondon.org.uk.

So who is our project production team and what have they been up to so far?

Meet Shona, Grant, Tola, Freddie, Charley and Jason.

We have been working together since January, when Lynda and I went over the the Newham Community Links Centre to introduce ourselves and explain the project brief. We discussed the ways we would be working, what we needed to research and film, and a rough timetable of the project. It was a chance for the group to decide whether they wanted to get involved, to ask questions and to let us know if there was a particular aspect of the project they were most interested in (for example music/soundtrack production). It was also a great opportunity to catch up with Sophie, who is one of the Centre Managers, and who has been extremely patient with us whilst we got the project brief together (Hello Sophie! and thank you!) 

For the first week, the group came over to the Museum of London Docklands to get acquainted with the Museum space, and to take a look at the touch screen interactive in the LSS Gallery that their final work will go into. We had some great discussions in reaction to the Gallery, and followed this up with a look at the film ‘500 years later’ by Owen ‘Alik Shahadah – we have shown this film to previous project groups at the Museum, and find it always serves as serious food for thought.

The second week was all about getting our head round the periods of the 60s-80s, and in particular, focusing on what was happening in London. Using the timeline produced by the Roots to Reckoning team (Neil Kenlock, Armet Francis, and Charlie Phillips), each group member selected a particular event or issue from each respective decade, and used the wonder of Internet connections to research related articles and photos. The information collated made up the beginnings of idea/mood boards for each decade, which we will continue to build on over the project. From these boards we also drew up four working categories: Education, Entertainment, Career and Ambition, and Lifestyle. These will be developed into the final themes the interviews will go into on the touch-screen installation.

Last week we were joined by Rib Davis from the Oral History Society, who led an introductory workshop on recording Oral History and practical interview techniques. Rib has worked on a series of fantastic Oral History projects over at The Lightbox, and has a wealth of experience having carried out hundreds of interviews. It was great to pick his brains regarding interview etiquette, finding the right questions to get people talking, and of course, the art of laughing without making a sound (essential for audio-only interviews).

I particularly enjoyed listening to the practice interviews, when our young people took up the interviewer roles. It was a sly opportunity to earwig into the teenage lives of Lynda, Shona, Jason and Rib – I heard snippets of disgruntled trumpet practice, football matches vs. live music, and the inevitability of growing old and relying on Lucozade, it was pretty fascinating!

And so, the project continues on this week, which I hope to update you with in the not-too-distant future. Major kudos must be given to our group (both staff and students), who have kindly volunteered to come in during their half-term break (which Lynda and I are really very happy about, otherwise I will eat all the biscuits). I am also hoping that we will actually get some of our young people on here to update the project blog, and I do believe we have a mix-tape in the works……..