Inside the Museum of London

In the run up to the opening of our new exhibition, Our Londinium 2012 at the Museum of London, illustrator Olly Gibbs talks us through how he created his illustrations for the exhibition’s marketing campaign. We challenged Olly to create four different designs – two modern objects made up of Roman object doodles, and two Roman objects made up of modern object doodles, find out how he did it below…

Hello all, Olly Gibbs here! I have been kindly asked to give you lucky people a glimpse into the creation of the latest illustrations for the upcoming Our Londinium 2012 exhibition at the Museum of London. A quick bit of background info about my work is that it normally revolves around machinery and motifs of machines but in a doodle and detailed style. The challenge here was developing the style to incorporate the Roman and modern objects that were to be included in the exhibition into the work. This was very much a new direction for me and I was pretty surprised by the final result in that the pieces still looked very much like my original style!

To begin with I was treated to a tour of the Museum itself to get my head around the scale of the project as well as finding out more about what kind of objects I would be dealing with, this included the likes of a sarcophagus and a bust of Hadrian. The key part of my illustrations is the level of detail I try to put into them. A new challenge again for this project was doing enough detail that would work on an enlarged format as well as printed small – this required a lot of trial and error and printing! Not only that but I needed to get the perspective spot on, as well as adding depth to the objects. For me, the final posters where it works best are the amphora and helmet which required attention to detail to add a 3D feel to them.


My first attempts for the illustrations weren’t as detailed as the finals, using larger objects and less of them. The number of layers on each of the illustrations soon grew especially when I needed to create the illusion of a corner or round surface. Many hours were spent looking at pixels and there’s a lot of hand drawn dots and small objects put in there for this effect! A lot of work was involved but the outcome is very worthwhile! In addition, each object needed to be historically accurate so there was a lot of time spent getting all the features correct – this was key for the centurion helmet plume which took on a few different shapes of helmets in the Roman era.

I was very pleased with the final outcome of the illustrations and it was fun working with the Museum on the project as well as meeting the Junction youth panel who chose me for the project! Cheers guys, I’m looking forward to seeing it all come together, the rest of you are in for a treat!

Our Londinium 2012 opens at the Museum of London on Friday 22 June 2012, entry is free.

> Find out more about the exhibition
> Find out more about Olly Gibbs

It’s been a month since a very busy February half term, and although everyone is back to school, there is no let-down in our work as Visitor Services Hosts.

The Dickens and London exhibition is proving to be extremely popular and with just three months to go until it runs its course in June, tickets are still high in demand. To avoid disappointment and make use of our advance ticket discount, book your tickets at least one day in advance!

Remember, admission to the Museum of London and the permanent galleries are free, and so are all our Host-led activities such as our daily gallery tours, as well as interesting, on-the-spot short talks on objects within our collections.

Our free gallery tours are every day at 11am, 12pm, 3pm and 4pm and last approximately 45 minutes – perfect if you are in the City and looking for something to do during your lunch break!

From ancient archaeological artefacts discovered on the Thames foreshores to Roman Londinium and Anglo-Saxon Lundenwich, and from the Great Fire and Newgate Prison to the Victorian shops, Suffragettes and the Poll Tax Riots, the tours will leave you with knowledge and a new-found passion for this World City that is London.

If you don’t have time to join one of our tours, you don’t have to miss out! Every day we offer short, 10 minute talks on some of the most interesting objects within our galleries. You can also support the museum by purchasing a Museum Higlights book for £5. This is not only a great souvenir but also excellent accompaniment to your visit to our Museum.

At the Museum of London, we strive very hard to make our collections accessible to everyone, and have therefore started to offer tours to visually impaired visitors. Should you know someone who could benefit from one of our VisualEyes tours, please call the Museum of London box office on 020 7001 9844 to arrange a free tour.

Giusy

I know you have all been waiting for him so I won’t make you wait any longer. After a great deal of effort we have managed to secure an interview with perhaps the most busy man around Xmas (plus his helpers, our Victorian photographer and the mystic Gypsy lady) , of course its our Santa.

Welcome Santa, are you ready for this year?

Of course, I am looking forward to making all the children around the whole world have a special day and seeing the joy on their faces when they open their presents.

That’s great news to hear Santa. It must be tough going what with all of that exercise you are getting. Are you feeling fit enough to lift all those presents?

Don’t worry about me as my elves take good care of me. They have done their elf and safety.

Good to hear, so what can we expect to happen this year?

I am planning to do all my travelling at night so I will have some time to spend in my Grotto here at the Museum of London Docklands. That means I can meet lots of families and offer them some presents when they come to see me and hopefully have a photo with everyone involved so we can all remember this special occasion.

Anything you would like to say to everyone before you leave on your errands?

Yes, I wish everyone a merry, merry Christmas and look forward to seeing you soon.

If you want to meet our Santa then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day when you visit the Museum of London Docklands.

Santa’s Grotto is open daily until 23 December 2011.

If you are unable to visit Santa why not come along and meet Scrooge from 27 December 2011 to 1 January 2012!

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Santa or Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website here.

Its that time again. December is upon us and we have another fabulous Grotto about to start at the Museum of London Docklands . No need to take my word for it though, just take a look at this tantalising glimpse of the Grotto entrance.

Here is another picture too of what it looks like right in the heart of our Grotto

If you want to see more and meet our Santa then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day here at the Museum of London Docklands.

Santa’s Grotto is open daily from 10 December until 23 December 2011.

If you are unable to visit Santa why not come along and meet Scrooge from 27 December 2011 to 1 January 2012!

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Santa or Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website.

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.

Planning to visit the Museum of London this half term with you family?

To support the launch of HiddenCity’s (external link) interactive text message trail we are looking for a family who would be happy to be filmed using the trail in our galleries early next week.

The film would then be posted onto the Museum of London’s YouTube Channel (external link) and mentioned in tweets (external link) and Facebook updates (external link).

As a thank you for taking part we will provide you with £50 of museum shop vouchers to spend during your visit or save until Christmas.

If you are interested in helping the museum launch this exciting new product email marketing@museumoflondon.org.uk with your contact details including your intended visit date and time and we will see if your timings match ours!

The Discovery Trail takes families on a journey of exploration through London’s turbulent history. Using text messages and a map of the museum, players are guided through a trail of clues, each leading them to a new location within the Museum where they use their ingenuity to deduce answers from their surroundings. Players who successfully complete the trail win a coveted ‘Certified Londoner’ badge by showing the Museum hosts their final congratulatory text message.

To take part, participants sign up in advance by visiting the HiddenCity website (external link), head to the Museum, send the message ‘start’ and get cracking. The trail takes approximately two hours to complete, including a break. It is ideally played by several teams, each consisting of two to four people and costs £16 per team. Entry to the Museum of London is free.

Those who take up the challenge will step through time and can expect to see, touch, hear and even smell exhibits spanning prehistoric, Roman and medieval London, right up to the 20th century and present day city.

The Your 2012 exhibition is up and running and we are getting some fantastic feedback. If you have not already seen it then come along to the Museum of London Docklands and visit our free exhibition detailing the changes that have been going on and around the Olympic site at Stratford.

What with the opening of the new Westfield shopping site it is now possible to see the key buildings around the Olympic site from new, exciting vantage points. We took a look around the area and have come up with the space age, futuristic images of the site below.

If the building below looks unfamiliar its probably because the public view of it was largely obscured previously by the Aquatic Centre. This building is in fact where the waterpolo will be played and is a temporary venue that will seat 5,000 people during the Olympics.

If you would like to find out more about the Olympic site then I recommend you come along to one of our Olympic walking tours that can be booked at  ‘Walk the Olympic Way: Stratford Regeneration Tour’ which take place every Saturday and last Wednesday of each month.

Also I would like to give a quick reminder that we are looking for your photographs and observations of the Olympic Park to share on our YOUR 2012 flickr group. We will also be sharing in this group some of the hundreds of images that we took while developing this display.

Hello everyone, Giusy here again from the Museum’s Visitor Services Team. I hope you read and enjoyed my last post on Ed’s mail making. You are still on time to catch up here if you haven’t!

In this post I focus on the workshops developed by my colleagues Stephanie and Joanna.

Stephanie has run a Victorian object handling workshop which has looked specifically at objects found in the kitchen and to do with food and drink, for example butter pats and toast forks.

During the session she used pictures to illustrate how kitchens have changed over the time and she loved to talk about different technologies and appliances that you find in the kitchen. For the kids to take home, she has offered some examples of Victorian Recipes to try.
She has enjoyed a lot doing this workshop, because it allowed children to actually handle real Victorian objects. One of her tricks was not to tell the kids what the objects were so to make them guess. It was nice I am sure to see their expressions when discovering what the objects were used for, for example when it came to a very unusual bottle opener.

She also enjoyed doing the workshop, because the Victorian period is one of her favourite periods in British history and she definitely loves cooking! I can testify to this as the great quantity of cupcakes frequently baked for the Hosts team made their way to the staff room straight from her kitchen oven!

Joanna’s workshop is called “The Glassmaker Apprentice” and focuses on families with children aged 3+. Her workshop is based on the long and fascinating history of stained glass work pieces, with a particular focus on windows.

She told me that the very first examples are from ancient Egypt, later Greece and Rome, but its most height of fashion was during the dark medieval times.
Nowadays this fashion is coming back usually in smaller forms like elements in doors or art works in public buildings, galleries, churches and very tiny forms like window decorations and sun catchers.
On the workshop day Joanna and the families work at making sun catchers.

There are several shapes to choose from and they use brightly foils to imitate glass. To begin with, children and parents are encouraged to draw a flower or other designs on a black cardboard and then they cut off all the holes. For younger children Johanna offers already made models. The following and easy step is to glue various pieces of coloured foils to the back side of the sun catcher and finally attach a string so to be hung in a window. Have a look, I love the dove one!

You can join Johanna’s  next  workshop on Sunday 13 November.  I hope to see you there!

With Your 2012, our free photography exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands now open, we wanted to share two of our favourite images from the 20 on display and ask you to contribute to our flickr group.

This photo below was taken from inside the Viewtube of the centrepiece Olympic stadium.

Here is another photograph this time of the basketball stadium (which hosted a warm-up match between Australia and China this week)  that has been nicknamed the ‘mattress’ and amazingly can be disassembled and reassembled anywhere in the country in just six months.

We are looking to share via flickr some of the hundreds of images we did not have room to include in the exhibition and to encourage you to share your photographs of the area as it continues to change in the run up to the Olympic Games.

So if you have photographs you would like to share please upload them to http://www.flickr.com/groups/your_2012/ .

To get things started I have uploaded 23 of my photographs today.

I will  monitor the group and share further photographs, insights and themes over the coming weeks and look forward to discussing with you the images that are posted by you alongside those taken by us.

Peter

Toddler favourites Teletubbies and In the Night Garden are the latest in a long heritage of fantastic children’s TV for the under 5s.

The origins of children’s television in programmes such as Andy Pandy and Bill and Ben (the flowerpot men) are, in some ways, very different but at the same time very familiar to what our children see and enjoy today.

The pioneers of this new medium in the 40s and 50s were Frida Lingstrom and Maria Bird at the BBC who developed the ‘Watch with Mother’ slot and invented the characters Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben and the Woodentops amongst others.

The Museum of London is fortunate to have many of these puppets as part of the collection.

On the Exploring 20th Century London website you will find an Audio Slideshow  alongside an opportunity to test your knowledge in a fun quiz whilst looking out for tweets and facebook posts capturing the lives of Londoners  in  the 20th Century.