The working life of Museum of London

Starting to look at art

During this week’s Many East End session, we asked members of youth organisation Tolerance in Diversity what they thought was the most significant event in the East End in the last two years. I’ll reveal their answer in a bit, but first a little about the session. (As we were starting to examine, and create, art this week, you’ll see the photos have taken on a post-modern feel).

Selecting photos

Artist Sarah Carne started off by asking everyone about the photos they had taken in the galleries last week to represent their favourite East End place, person, image and thing. Collectively, the group discussed each photo and sorted them into three categories: Definitely representative, Definitely not representative and Not sure. Strong strands started to emerge amongst the images, the strongest of which was family. Others included Canary Wharf, The Thames, water more generally and modern architecture. One participant had chosen ‘Turkoman’ to represent her favourite East End person, her brother. She said Turkoman reminded her of him when he was little dressing up in girls clothes and in her words, ‘being a girl’.

Turkoman

The ‘Definitely representative ‘ and ‘Not Sure’ photos were then gathered and saved, and participants will be adding them to their project portfolios.

Sarah then introduced us to her art.

Sarah Carne - Loving her Yugo

Sarah explained that she  does a lot of work in film and photography and that, in her words, ‘My art is all about me’. As well as showing us interesting commissions she has done on a variety of topics she also introduced us to what it would appear is the love of her life – her Yugo. The amazing Yugo has been photographed, written upon, Letrasetted (if that’s a word), converted into a cinema, use to ferry people between exhibitions, travelled ‘home’ to Yugoslavia, rotted, molded, broken down and vandalised. And now Sarah is  writing a musical about it. The Yugo is Sarah’s. As art, it represents her and reflects her. The Yugo also provided the subject matter for a series of photos, which when shown in quick succession, convert into a mini film. The combination of self, and the creation of film, was our inspiration for our next task.

Personalising a peg

Sarah gave everyone a peg and asked them to customise it to represent them. One person simply added their name using Letraset, followed by a semi-colon to represent the fact that he does a lot of computer programming. (The semi-colon occurs alot in computer programming, we were told!) Other pegs were converted into a girl with little pigtails and a shark. Others were covered in letters and stickers and one was not touched in itself, but attached to a Bangladeshi flag, to represent nationality.

Loving the peg

So, you may be wondering how all this relates to most significant event in the East End in the last two years. Well…

Sarah explained that the customised pegs, and other pegs if necessary were going to be ’brought to life’ in a quick film to represent that event, whatever the group thought it may be. So, a discussion began on possible contenders for this event. Suggestions included:

1. Construction of the Olympics site
2. Losing the bid to host the World Cup
3. English Defensive League march this summer
4. Construction of Westfield
5. Riots in Hackney

After some to-ing and fro-ing the group came to a consensus that, in their opinion, the most significant event in terms of impact on their East End was the English Defensive League march. Several of the group members had been there on the day, having joined lots of people in coming out against the march. In the midst of the tension, the EDL coach broke down, just outside the East London Mosque, and a previously unpredicted flash point erupted.  You can read more about the event here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14779772

So, using pegs, and a healthy slug of creativity, the group created a short film of the events of the day. We do have the film footage but haven’t had a chance to do anything post production yet so a photo will have to do!

Us and Them - In Pegs

And that concluded last night’s session. I’m sure we will be going back to this topic, and looking in further depth at why the group felt that this is the most significant East End event in the last two years. Because of the public sector strike we are not meeting next week, so the group are meeting independently. Leading on from examining what their East End is, they are going to be considering how they would represent it artistically. Their ‘pitch’ is going to be presented to the curator of View Tube in Stratford on 7th December. Watch this space…

Team bonding

Down at Docklands, we are working on a new concept for the part of the museum that looks at the Docks since 1945. The working title of this project is Many East Ends.

In order to tell as rich a history as possible in the new gallery, Docklands Strategy Manager, George Young, is doing lots of creative colloborations with all types of groups and individuals. One of these groups is Tolerance in Diversity, an organisation based in Limehouse led by young people for young people. TiD work to reduce discrimination and prejudice by delivering training and running events throughout London. They have worked with the museum before and we have invited them back for their input into the concept for Many East Ends.

Why the long face?

The process started last night, under the guidance of artist Sarah Carne. www.sarahcarne.org

Sarah asked everyone to think of  their favourite East End person, place, image and thing.  Everyone was given a video camera and asked to give their four examples to camera. This has delivered some very interesting footage that we hope to put online in the future, together with other footage as the project progresses.

After filming, and armed with a camera, everyone was asked to find examples of items in the gallery that connected to, or represented, their four examples. Here is a snap shot of some of them.

Canary Wharf model

Bridge for DLR

East End family

Bomb by William Ware

We then started talking and thinking about what everyone wanted to get out of the project.

Thinking of ideas

Sarah asked everyone to answer the following questions:

What skills to I bring to the project?
What do I want to get from the project?
What could stand in my way?
What skills do you need in the East End?

Hard at work

Lastly, Sarah led discussion on what elements of the East End would need to be included in the gallery when it was redeveloped, based on the thoughts from the evening’s activity. On initial discussion, the following ideas and elements were put forward.

• Politics
• Immigration
• Buskers
• A working DLR train
• A mock tube station – not Bermondsey
• Gangs
• The River Thames

Developing, expanding and honing this list will form a key element of this project as it continues towards Christmas and into the New Year. Next week we will be returning to it to see what ideas have changed or grown. We will also be looking at how far back in time the Many East Ends gallery should go, as well as having more fun with cameras, creating more bunting (as seen in the background of the photos) and adding more to our project portfolio books.

Our Primary Schools Programme Manager Nina Sprigge, reveals more about the build up to Kids Takeover Day 2011 at the Museum of London.

If Charles Dickens was alive today do you think he would be part of the Twitterati or an avid Facebook fan? (Remember, this is the man who in September 1860 burnt the majority of his correspondence).

Here at the Museum of London we have decided to honour Dickens’ work with a major exhibition Dickens and London which opens on 9 December 2011 in advance of the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 2012.

We have plans for a number of social media initiatives that we hope will enhance both the exhibition and your visit, the first of which launches this Monday 12 September – a virtual Dickens Book Club’s on both Twitter and Facebook.

Although an open forum to discuss all aspects of Dickens’s work, we will be suggesting a book a month to read and posting our thoughts (and hopefully chatting to you about your thoughts) across both Twitter and Facebook starting with September’s chosen novel: Great Expectations.

Other confirmed titles so far include: A Christmas Carol (naturally for December!), Barnaby Rudge in January 2012 (we will let you into a secret, this is such a large novel someone in the office is already reading it!) and Oliver Twist in April 2012.

So why not join us as we explore some of Dickens’ greatest works alongside some of his lesser known titles.

We are also looking for you to suggest titles to include so if you have a favourite please do let us know either via Twitter or Facebook and we will try to feature them before the exhibition closes on 10 June 2012.

Our Twitter and Facebook accounts will also be home to sneak previews of what to expect when you visit the exhibition and insights from our exhibition curators via our blog pages again in advance and during the course of the exhibition, so be sure to follow us or check our website regularly.

Look out too for an exciting short story initiative launching in November based on some of Dickens’ ideas for stories and characters which did not find their way into print.

Following on from our recent posts concerning the documenting of the PLA Archive we now move on to the conservation process.

Have you ever seen such beautifully wrapped volumes?! If only all the archive could look so neat!

This is the work of Rosalind Foley, a student who has just completed a year’s training in paper conservation at University of the Arts, Camberwell. She loves to make boxes and re-package and is currently volunteering with us one day a week, helping to clean and pack the Port of London Authority Archive.

Working alongside her are Dominic Flook and Kate Barber. They are spending hours of their time gently hoovering and brushing away the years of London grime that’s gradually settled on the documents that are now so precious to us in the archives.

Out of interest, the little vacuum cleaner attachments are the same as the ones you can buy for when (ok, if) you clean the inside of your car!

Much of the volunteers’ time is spent gradually removing dirt from papers using ‘smoke sponges’. As there was so much chimney soot and smoke produced in London during the 19th century, this dirt attached itself to documents and now needs to be removed. Smoke sponges act like erasers, gently removing dirt without the need to dampen the documents. In some ways I suppose we are brushing away history, but then again we need to conserve the documents too!

The extra soft goat hair brushes were bought by one of our conservators when she was on holiday in Hong Kong.

We are making great strides with the cataloguing project. We’ll update you again soon.

Claire Frankland

Port & River Archivist and Project Manager.

If you have been following our blog updates throughout the development of our YOUR 2012 display, you will know that a number of visitor hosts from the Museum of London Docklands have been visiting the Olympic site at Stratford, East London since February 2010 capturing in photographs the construction work and its impact on the landscape and community.

From Friday, 20 of these images will form a free display at the museum.

In planning the display the hosts soon realised that they would not be able to feature all of their images and indeed ongoing work at the site after the selection process for display had been completed could not be included.

With this in mind, it was decided that the museum’s online resources such as its blog pages and social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter would be a great platform to share additional images and ensure that the ongoing story of the site could be featured in a virtual extension of the YOUR 2012 project.

Here, one of the display curators and visitor hosts, Dave Matthews, shares three images and insight from a visit to the area over the weekend:

Anish Kapoor’s Orbit Tower is getting larger by the minute. Every day it seems to take on a new twist!

Even at this early stage, it appears to be towering over the main stadium. When the project is completed, the tower will offer a viewing platform 115 metres (337ft) high.

As Newham’s regeneration projects gather pace, you can’t help noticing all the new planters and baskets full of striking flowers – quite a contrast to all the building work still going on in and around Stratford. No matter which corner you turn, there is evidence of change, and with the addition of the flowers, Stratford feels vibrant and colourful.

The Time Spiral, as it is officially known, can be found outside Maryland Station. This winding structure contemplates themes of time and space and will eventually be lit up. This twisted steel clock, created by artist Malcolm Robertson, originally stood outside Stratford Station. It was relocated to Maryland Station to make way for the new pedestrian bridge that links to the Olympic Park.

Be sure to check back regularly for more updates from the project.

Following on from Marie-Claire’s earlier blog post on documenting the Port of London Authority Archive , Marie-Claire now moves on to cataloguing the archive of the longest-lived of the dock companies, the East and West India Dock Company (EWIDC).

This is a very different challenge: not only are there far more documents, but their structure is far more disrupted. Having learnt from our previous cataloguing, we decided to vary our approach. While it is essential to list some material at item level, others fall into sub-groups which can be adequately listed more briefly at series level.  This approach has been taken in relation to the documentation of a Working Agreement set up between the EWIDC and the main other dock company, the London and St Katherine Docks Company in an attempt to stop the competitive reduction of the rates charged for use of the companies’ docks which had brought the EWIDC to the brink of bankruptcy.

The Working Agreement heralded the beginning of the end for both dock companies as separate entities, and they merged in 1901. The EWIDC Minute Book for this period contains delightful evidence of the affection in which the company was held by some of its employees. At the end of the final entry, with the company formally wound up, an anonymous hand has added “Good Bye. R.I.P.”

It is interesting to see this sentiment in relation to the dock company, perhaps balancing the usual perception of the companies as the villains in contemporary labour relations. I should add that the more typical view is also reflected in the collection!

Written by our cataloguer, Marie-Claire Wyatt.

Look out for our next PLA Archive blog post as we focus on the work undertaken to conserve  these fragile paper records.

Time is ticking away before the 20 images that will make up the Your 2012 free photography exhibition go on display dealing with the impact of the construction of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Come along and see it when it starts at the Museum of London Docklands on the 22nd of July 2011.

Obviously feverish action is taking place to make sure everything is ready and looking fantastic. Knowing the effort that is needed to make this exhibition take place makes myself even more impressed by the rate of progress at the Olympic site. Already the Aquatic Centre is ready as is the Velodrome and according to the latest news this month so is the mobile basketball stadium. Perhaps the most amazing achievement is the biggest, the Olympic stadium itself, as can be seen below.

Efforts are now going on the make the surrounding vicinity look equally resplendent as can be seen by the following image below.

Construction efforts have now moved on to the left of the site.  (If you look carefully in the distance you can see the red brick Byrant and May building).

Further along you can see how the site is now being concreted over.

If you would like to learn more about the Olympic site than I recommend that you come along to one of the our tours called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we will be offering on Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

Don’t forget to check this blog next week when I will be talking about art around the Olympic site and Stratford.

Peter

What do sugar, bridge construction, the Temperance Movement and the discovery of a pre-historic skeleton have in common? Well, they are just some of the subjects documented in the archive of the Port of London Authority (PLA) housed at the Museum of London Docklands.

Cataloguer, Marie-Claire Wyatt, explains more:

A few months ago the project to document the PLA Archive entered an exciting new stage, with the start of formal cataloguing. As you can see from the examples above, the archive has a very broad range of contents. However, its primary purpose is to document the history of the docks of London since the creation of the first enclosed dock system (the West India Docks) in 1799, along with the administration of the River Thames. The archive was collected during the 1970s and 1980s and has hitherto received very little cataloguing. The archive is quite disorganised, with no trace of “original order” – the structure of the papers while they were in use by their creators.

We have therefore chosen to give the archive a structure based on business function. It is deeply satisfying reuniting records which have been separated ever since their arrival at Museum of London Docklands and creating a formal structure which will enable the full history of the dock companies to be properly interpreted.

Due to the size of the collection, as a first stage we are concentrating upon the records of the nineteenth century docks. The docks were built by private dock companies over a period between 1799 and 1886, and were subject to the normal practices of competition and the need to offer shareholders an annual dividend. Relations between the dock companies could therefore be highly strained at times, a subject to which I hope to return in a future post.

Each dock company is being catalogued individually, and to get a sense of how this might work we began by listing the records of the East India Dock Company and the West India Dock Company, both companies with relatively small archives and therefore a simple collection structure. The catalogues for these will eventually live on MIMSY, the Museum’s catalogue system.

For these we tried listing everything at a very detailed level, so each minute book, financial ledger and file of papers documenting the construction or extension of the docks has been given its own description.  This is how I prefer to catalogue: it improves my knowledge of the creator and the background to the collection, in most cases the individual items are interesting in themselves and the descriptions are the most useful to researchers. It is, however, very time-consuming!

Having cut our teeth on these two small sub-collections, we moved on to cataloguing the archive of the longest-lived of the companies, the East and West India Dock Company (EWIDC)….more on this in my next update!