Inside the Museum of London

The Inspiring London space is currently home to a display of photographic work by acclaimed photographer Dorothy Bohm. The display is called Women in Focus and the title is pretty self explanatory. We have lots of great work by Dorothy in the collection and this display gave us a good excuse to use her approach as inspiration for our own creativity.

To do this, we roped in the skills of the talented and wonderfully fizzy artist, Edori Fertig. Not only is Edori an artist in her own right but she also knows Dorothy. They met through her daughter, curator Monica Bohm-Ducen when Edori displayed her work in an exhibition about Jewish female identity called the Rubies and Rebels. So, a good person to introduce us to Dorothy. And also someone it’s great to be around. Edori is part of a collective called the Skip Sisters, so named because they make art from things they collect from skips. It’s so much fun. One thing she makes is oyster card wallets, and it was these we made ourselves on Tuesday.

Layered and layered by participant Cesearea

Edori took us around the exhibition, and showed us that there are some key principals in all of Dorothy’s work. We were encouraged to find these in the work on show in Women in Focus. Firstly, the colour red.

Secondly, the voyeur, or onlooker. This is either a person, or something more subtle like a face on a poster, or within another image. In the photograph below the onlooker is almost hidden. Can you see her?

And finally, layers.

Can you see how these were interpreted and deconstructed in the response work below? That’s the high brow bit. The less high brow bit is how much fun we had making oyster card holders!

London re-envisaged

Making links to when women were fighting to be in focus

The above wallet uses material from our collection relating to the suffragette campaign. Making links to when women were fighting to be in focus, it reads (from right side to left):

Special Note!!

The bearer of this ticket is called a Suffragette
Who tries her best the sexes to reverse
She claims to have a grievance
Which she’s nursing hard, you bet,
What a pity she has NOTHING ELSE to NURSE.

IT ALSO ENTITLES HER TO PASS OUT of her own house and neglect her domestic duties, leaving them to the tender mercies of anyone, while she is trying to get the management of the country INTO HER “CAPABLE HANDS” ? WHEN, HEAVEN HELP US!!

IT ALSO ENTITLES HER, at any moment, to ventilate her grievances, and to turn on HER GAS, but she must not SUFFER-A-JET to escape for more than six hours at a time for fear of asphyxiating her audience.

THIS SEASON TICKET ALSO ENTITLES HER to seize-on every opportunity to NURSE her grievances.

Playing with edges

Made by Sergei

Malika Booker, image copyright Naomi Woodis

This is Malika Booker. Amongst many other things, she is a London-based writer and spoken word artist. She is also Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. You can find out more about her here. I’ve admired Malika’s work for a while now so I was thrilled when she agreed to lead a workshop in the Continue Creating programme. She chose the subject of sugar, inspired by the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery and worked with us to each create a piece of writing about sugar. The finished articles are at the bottom of this post.

A good old bag of Taste and Smile

For most people, writing creatively is a little bit scary. We think we won’t be very good at it. We think we’ll expose ourselves. We think others will be better. When we did it at school it wasn’t very good and we haven’t done it since, thank you very much. Although she didn’t tell us, I have a sneaky feeling that Malika knew all of this, so she started us off we three exercises to ease us in. Firstly, we all introduced ourselves and told a little anecdote about our relationship to sugar, accompanied by an action. Stavroulla told us that she took sugar in her coffee, so did an action of someone stirring a cup. A cup, never a mug.

The freewrite rules, being demonstrated by our glamorous assistant Halima

Then we did a freewrite, which is a bit like a stream of consciousness. You have 2 minutes and you just have to write. And keep writing. Anything. Anything at all. Not necessarily clever, or poetic, or even coherent. But you have to write. And you must not worry about things like spelling and punctuation. After two minutes furious writing, we came back together to think about the many ways sugar plays a part in our lives.

Our mind map of sugar

Then, to help the flow of ideas, we had 10 minutes to go a bit mad, making collage with sugar products. We were NOT supposed to eat the sweets…

Brigette making her sweet collage

Once we were all thoroughly sugared up, we went up to the gallery.

The sugar cane panel in London, Sugar and Slavery

Malika asked us to explore the gallery, making notes of things that struck us, before returning downstairs to get more ideas flowing.

Panel in the gallery that lists the number of enslaved Africans on ships

Downstairs, we paired up to tell each other a personal story involving sugar. Richard told Gilly about the time he’d had 8 teeth removed in one go because of his sugar addiction… partially brought on by eating Frosties with tango! Gilly told Richard how she thought unnatural sugar was poisonous. Halima told me a lovely story about her dad, who would cut an apple into four equal parts every night before bed and give each child a piece to demonstrate that everyone was loved equally. This lovely ritual continued right into Halima’s teenage years. Brigitte told Stavroulla about making the annual Christmas cake, where every member of the family had to take it in turns to stir the mix and then prick the cake with sherry and Stav told Brigitte about eating hot apple fritters on market mornings as a child.

London, Sugar and Slavery comment card

The last thing we did was listen to Malika read some beautiful poems by other writers about sugar, taken from the Poetry foundation. One of the poems she read was Sugar Cane, by Alfred Corn. Please take a couple of minutes to read it, it’s not only beautifully written but also unlocks the themes of the gallery in a very relevant way. As Malika read, we sucked on fresh sugar cane, bought from a market in Brixton that morning and chopped into chunks for us by a very nice man.

Fresh sugar cane pre and post chopping

And then we wrote. We had 10 minutes, we had the tools that we had  learnt earlier in the afternoon and we had inspiration. The pieces are below. I wanted you to see them in their authors’ own hands (those who were happy for them to go on the blog) so I have pasted the pictures and typed the words below them. They are all great pieces and well worth a read. Why don’t you have a go at writing one? Grab something sweet, chat to some friends, have bit of a freewrite and see where it takes you.

Richard's story of the banana and chocolate pizza

I recall, as I am sat ensconced in biscuit crumbs around my table. A trip far away beyond the fields of Sevenoaks – where no light pollution prevails and no signal found for my mobile. A remote residential setting for my singing group: streetwise opera a couple of days or more away from society surrounded by folk songs and organic food! What a punishment, not even brown sugar can lift my spirits amongst the withdrawal of my junk food diet. But brief salvation in the form of a pizza making master class. A chance to create a savoury and “SWEET” one. Banana and chocolate is layered all over my pizza, a whole slab of a bar is used – so thick; the chunks don’t even melt fully. At last a chance to drown in my own sweet gorgeous gluttony! (Hand made!!!)

Halima's music teacher who saw melodies as chocolate bars

I remember my primary school music teacher, Mr. Mills, who described different sections in a musical melody as a bar of chocolate. He said, ‘think of it as a giant bar, which is easy to separate, as opposed to a great big slab of chocolate.’ I remember the class understanding straight away. It was a metaphor we can all relate to. We definitely performed better in that class, hitting the highs, the lows and the in-betweens.

Brigitte's ballad to the unknown numbers

It was 1788 but no English ship’s captain knew how many African human cargo it carried across the Great water to England

But to the islands still being fought over by French & Dutch and & English monarchies

It was 1789 but no record of the number of the ship’s human cargo from Africa, which sailed from Africa to the islands

It was 1790 and still the numbers remained unknown – the destination, mainly Jamaica

It was 1791, more rules, fewer rules but now a ship has memory and as it sets sail to Jamaica with 283 or were these 1000 and 283?

It was 1791 and as islands are captured not just Jamaica but other islands come into focus 131 but at once 394 (or maybe 2394) and in St. Vincent

Even St Eustatius with 216 or was that 21,600 received – the makings of the labour to create a sugar loaf, nipped at the head or hot chocolate

My synopsis of the afternoon

I can tell you about poisons

And teeth

And sherry

I can tell you about conversazione

and riflessione.

Of Trinidad

And stabbing at a swamp

Of shards and nippers

And equally divided apples.

I can tell you about figs and dates

Natural

Fresh or dried

I can tell you’ve had your hair tied

I can tell you about Frosties and tango

And the sweetness of Pineapple

Rum and

Mango.

I can tell you about whips

About sweets that are not for eating

And of the people who eat them anyway

I can tell you of seven souls, in one

room, on one day, sharing their sweetness.

And finally... Malika's masterpiece

There is a sweet agony in claiming you

blocks of white crystal, grown of brown

like God’s soil. There is a sweetness

about you that shape pure china. So

fragile, (so white), so delicate to be

sipped, little finger extended & what

about when auntie caught you, ‘a

little bit of sugar,’ they said. I searched

her skin every morning to see if her brown

skin became grains of you, not seeing

the price of you, how you break the organs

in the body like china, ceramic crashing

on to the wooden floor, you shatter the kidney

& bloat stomachs, you paint big toes

a purple splash of gangrene.

Did we not  heed how your parents ‘cane’ danced

green to the breezes wind, a field of

swaying care free bodies, but their

leaves would leave vicious cuts on

tender skin

How you cut us so deep sugar

darling yet we crave your

syrup taste like innocents walking

into a knife’s blade.

From Gary's archive

This month we looked at London’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) history. This was initiated by Gary, who has been collaborating with the museum for several years now and is a key face of the inclusion programme. Gary is interested in how visible LGBT history is in the museum’s permanent galleries and set us the challenge of finding as many LGBT objects on show as possible. What did we find? What can you find? And who was princess Serafina? All answers revealed below…

Anti-nazi badge

A search of the Museum’s Collections Online lists 18 objects linked to LGBT London. Of these 4 are printed ephemera, 1 is an outfit and 13 are badges. All of these are from the twentieth century and they are all on display in the World City gallery. For more info about the badges you can search our Collections Online and for the outfit below, please click here: http://bit.ly/SvwXll

Designed by Gibb and Fassett

So these are the objects that the website gives us but Gary was interested in whether our eyes would yield any other results. So we went looking… The first item someone found was this fine fellow:

Hadrian - Killer Queen

This is a copper alloy dupondius coin of Emperor Hadrian, ruler of the Roman Empire, AD 117-138. Although it was not uncommon for his predecessors to have gay lovers (alongside their wives), Hadrian was the first Roman emperor to be publicly ‘out’. This depiction of Hadrian sparked lots of discussion about homosexuality in ancient Roman and Greek culture, particularly with regards to the military. Gary told us that both empires encouraged homosexuality in their armies. They saw that soldiers fighting to defend someone they were in love with would fight twice as hard as those defending their friends and colleagues. After chatting about this, we continued our search. In the Expanding City gallery, someone pointed out the classical images on the Selfridges lift, some of which could be seen as homo-erotic.

Selfridges lift from 1928

Sadly, despite a continued search we didn’t find many more objects in the galleries that we saw as being linked to LGBT history and culture. I’d love to hear from you though, if you have spotted objects that we missed. Maybe this lack of obvious objects is something for us at the museum to think about. We do have lots of other items in storage, which may one day make it to the galleries. These can currently be viewed using Collections Online and include, among many other things, the below booklet.

Booklet from 1980

Gary, however, has an impressive personal archive of LGBT objects, images and quotes, which we had the great pleasure of rifling through. Please see some of these below and at the bottom of this blog post. After exploring the galleries, Gary led us in making jumping jack style puppets in celebration of all open-minded Londoners past and present. We took these on a gay pride march around the Newgate Prison Door and Well close prison cell – much to the entertainment of the on looking visitors! Here are some of them:

What do you mean? I always dress like this

Pretty in pink

Yes, my legs are longer than the others'

Get over it

So all that’s left now is to explain about Princess Serafina. She was London’s first recorded drag artist, working in London in the mid-18th century. Since her death she has continued to make appearances around London and yesterday she was with us all day, as Gary led the workshop in character, and costume! This definitely encouraged us all to have a laugh. But he stayed true to character by not just having fun but having a serious message too, one informed by lots of reading and lots of brain. Thank you so much for such a memorable workshop Gary.

Here’s to the promotion of love, for everyone, everywhere.

Previous LGBT exhibitions at Museum of London

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Explore-online/Past/OutInTime.htm

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Explore-online/Past/QueerIsHere.htm

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Explore-online/Past/Outside_Edge.htm

Quotes and Images

‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken.’ Oscar Wilde

‘Surely there can’t be any such thing!’ Queen Victoria, on Lesbianism

‘The whole trouble with western society today is the lack of anything worth concealing.’ Joe Orton

‘I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly and natural and spontaneously with me.’ Edward Carpenter,  1897

From Gary's archive

From Gary's archive

From Gary's archive

So this month, the Continue Creating massive went down to Spitalfields farm to learn a little bit about street art, from some people who know.

Participants' work. Yep - it's good.

Our workshop leaders know a thing or two about the history and practice of street art. Gary and Josh are street artists themselves. They run tours of street art in and around East London, which I am reliably told by my friend and teammate Jen, are ace. http://www.alternativeldn.co.uk/ Sadly we don’t have any pics of Gary and Josh but take it from me, they were thoroughly nice chaps.

The workshop started off with some history. We learnt about the fact that Street Art usually carries a political message, and was born out of artists’ desire to say  things about the spaces they inhabited. Artists also often wanted to express something about the people and forces that governed those spaces, or tried to. Josh told us that a lot of street artists now seek permission for the work they do (e.g. from the local council) and are also often commissioned to do pieces in public areas by private or public bodies. We asked how much ‘take home’ work by street artists costs and discovered that Banksy’s  most expensive piece sold for $US 1.87 million. Perhaps more interestingly though, some work that you can see on the streets of East London, is made by artists who can command up to £10,000 a piece.

Amy Amy Amy by Andrew

We were also told about the fundamental differences between Street Art and graffiti. Josh told us that Street Art is a recognised art form, in which layering, change and evolution is fundamental. The work is deliberately and proudly transitory with artists responding to, and adding to, the visual noise in any given area. He spoke about the fact that where he works depends on what is already there and that sometimes he doesn’t want to be the first person to infringe on, or paint over, a work by someone he really respects. The issue of respect, he explained, is fundamental to the difference between Street Art and graffiti. Graffiti can be simply a way of tagging when you’ve been somewhere, either to mark territory or simply for the sake of it. Graffiti can consist of one word sprawled across any public area or private property using spray paint or marker pen and some graffiti artists will tag anywhere, giving no thought to what was previously there or the purpose of what they are doing. This is the point of view of a street artist. If you’re a graffiti artist out there with a different view, please get in touch, I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Can you see Capital Arts?

So once we’d learnt our history it was time to get down to business. Everyone worked on their design on paper before hitting the spray cans. Most people created stencils on card with a blade, which was attached to our bit of the assigned wall and sprayed over. We were told that this model of street art developed because it allows the artist to spend a lot of time on the concept and not very long on the execution. So if you wanted to make a statement in a place that you weren’t supposed to you could get it done and get away quickly…

Claudia hard at work

Not only did the rain hold off (a near miracle) but some interesting noise was added to the wall. We’re looking forward to our Street Art spotting tour of East London in the future…

With London’s Gay Pride hitting the streets tomorrow, Sarah Gudgin, Curator of Oral History and Contemporary Collecting, revisits an interview with world-renowned gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

“We were for the first time in history coming out in our thousands. It had never been done before. Not only coming out but proud and defiant.”
Peter Tatchell, born 1952

London’s Gay Pride event on 7 July 2012 will be a focal point for the LGBTQ community in the capital. This year, the annual event is given even more significance as it is also World Pride in London, proving an opportunity to show solidarity with LGBTQ people globally. The event will attract large numbers of overseas visitors, many coming from countries where they are facing danger, prejudice, persecution and even death for being gay. However, this year amid controversies around funding, and there are calls for Pride to be scaled back to a political march.

Material in the Museum of London’s collections are a reminder of Pride’s modest but significant beginnings as UK Gay Pride Rally in 1972, which was scheduled to commemorate the Stonewall riots of 1969.

”

The original rally attracted around 2,000 participants who marched together through London’s streets for the first time. The march has been described as a ‘watershed event’ in gay history, and came at a time when many LGBTQ people were suffering prejudice and inequality. The rally was an important step in helping to create a gay liberation movement which would go on to fight for equality and justice for the LGBTQ community.
Peter Tatchell was amongst the original courageous campaigners who were part of the march. His memories recall the event (link opens mp3 audio file).

Peter’s recollections show us the importance of Pride to past generations, and how its original remit as a vehicle for raising awareness for social and political change must not be forgotten.

Looking at the official magazine of Gay Pride, London 07 published in 2007, shows how Pride had evolved and changed, reflecting a more confident LGBTQ community. Its pages are full of articles, advertisements and listings of events organised to celebrate the annual event. By this time Pride had become a corporate-sponsored event attracting over a million people, and helping to make it one of the largest outdoor events in the UK.

London’s Gay Pride has developed to combine a mix of personal, social and political motivations and is much more than simply an excuse for the LGBTQ community to party. It also provides an opportunity to demonstrate, raise awareness, and celebrate in visible numbers in the capital. As an annual event, it has contributed towards putting London on the list of the most gay-friendly capitals in the world.

Peter Tatchell’s interview was carried out as part of the London Liberationists video oral history project and forms part of the Museum of London’s Oral History Collection. Additional content from the project can be seen in an audio visual interactive in the Galleries of Modern London. You can also hear other interviews with Peter Tatchell as well as Sue Sanders and Christine Burns on Collections Online.

Little Syon in 1820

This week Continue Creating broke from the routine of doing a workshop at Museum of London and took part in the archaelogical dig to find Little Syon. ‘Little Syon’ sat in the grounds of Syon Park, Brentford. The house was built in c. 1592 by George Watson. The house changed hands a number of times and was eventually bought in 1818 by Hugh Percy, 3^rd Duke of Northumberland, and incorporated into Syon Park. It was demolished as part of the landscape renovations commissioned by the Duke but archive records suggest it was still standing in 1820, suggesting a demolition date in the early 1820’s. The excavation is the first time the site’s archaeological will be explored.

Starting to wash the finds

The session started with a very interesting talk from Kath, about the history of the site and what the archaelogists were hoping to find. We learnt about Syon during the Roman period, through the Battle (or skirmish) of Brentford in 1642, right up to the C19th. Then we were taught how to dig. Over the course of 30 minutes, 8 willing volunteers scraped carefully away at the earth in the hope that it might yield some of its secrets.

Stav and Andrew giving it a good scrub

A key part of the archaelogical process is ‘Finds washing’, literally washing what you have found. So with a bowl of clean water, a toothbrush and a gentle hand, the group set to work.

Trying to ignore the wild parakeets flying overhead

The age old dilemma: brick or roof tile?

 Once celan, we could really see what we had found.

In this tray you can see a number of things. There is an oyster shell, which Dan explained was, unlike today, the fast food of Roman times. Then, it was plentiful, cheap and delivered in throw away packaging (the shell!) You can also see pieces of glassware. Kate told us that the clear galss may have formed a vessel that carried ointment/beauty product and the green a wine bottle. The green glass had a sprawling iridescent stain on it, which may not be visible in the photograph, but was caused by soil staining over the years. There are also pieces of brick and roof tile and you can tell where someone had been guilty of shoddy workmanship. A grey seem running through the centre of the piece shows that it was not fired enough. The clay remained grey rather than turning red.

Victorian crockery

Two finds attracted particular attention. The first was this piece of Victorian crockery, probably a serving plate used for day to day eating, rather than special events.

Poppy ware

The second, what Kate referred to as the ’star find’, was this piece of ‘Poppy ware’, so called because of the black dots across it, which look like Poppy seeds. It is Roman, making it over 2,000 years old, and was almost certainly made in Highgate, North London, where the Romans produced a lot of Poppy ware. The Poppy seed pattern is not only decorative but as the circles are slightly raised, helps the user to grip it. This piece was probably part of a bowl.

After the visit, on the mini-bus on back to London Wall , everyone agreed that they had had a great afternoon. A massive thank you to the whole team who made it possible. Andrew did point out though that someone needs to be more careful with their pots because they are all broken!

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.