The working life of Museum of London

This month’s Continue Creating workshop saw old and new faces alike making 1940s inspired hats. Adult Programmes Manager and freelance milliner, Isabel Benavides showed participants how to take hats bought at charity shops for a couple of pounds and turn them into new creations using ‘make do and mend techniques’. Make do and mend or what has been trendily re-branded as up-cycling, involves taking an old or tired item of clothing, in this instance a hat, and refreshing it into something better. It was popular during rationing when money was tight and often women re-fashioned their husband’s hats, jackets, ties and shirts when they were away fighting for long periods.

 There is some wonderfully kitsch government issued ‘make do and mend’ films from the 1940s on youtube. We watched one that contains the immortal line “You can turn hubby’s hat into a hat for his sweet little wife”. 

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=51689

We also got a sneak peek at some hats from the store. These included the stunning evening pieces below designed by Italian legend Elsa Schiaparelli.

They then received an introduction to how to sculpt felt, create corsages, manipulate hat wire and use Petersham (specialist hat ribbon).  Everyone really got into it and a range of styles started to emerge. From the naval inspired…

 …through the post-modern…

… to the super exotic…

 By the end a great array of male and female hats had been produced and even a child’s head band as a birthday present for one of the participants’ 7 year old niece. 

 It was good to be reminded of ways to upcycle your wardrobe, using methods from another time of great austerity… 

Yesterday, a group of Londoners roamed around the Museum creating photographs using shoe boxes as cameras. Inspired by images in the Street Photography exhibition, they used the pin-hole technique, pioneered in the 1830s. When working in pin-hole, anything can be your camera. You simply make a hole in a box to let a very small amount of light onto photographic paper. The photographers of the images above and below used shoe boxes.

The shoe boxes were painted black inside, with a sheet of photographic paper on the bottom. The photographers set them up at different points around the site and allowed light through in for about 2 minutes. The images were then developed in the museum dark room with the help of facilitator Kathryn Faulkner and the museum photographic team. The end product is an intriguing negative image, but a few clicks on Photoshop or the right type of phone, reveal the positive version.

This workshop was part of the Inclusion ‘Continue Creating’ programme.

Iron Mongers Hall - Original Negative

Iron Mongers Hall - Positive inversion

Jug and glasses - Original negative

Jug and glasses - Inverted positive

High walk - Original Negative

High walk - Positive inversion

Garden - Negative original

Garden - Positive inversion

As Jimmy Somerville sang many years ago, there’s more to love than boy meets girl. Which is one of the reasons I chose to edit a short story collection called ‘Boys and Girls’. The book contains stories of young lesbian and gay love, and what better time to celebrate love in all its many varieties than on Valentine’s Day?

For Valentine’s @ Late I’ll be joined by several contributors to the book, including Stonewall Award-winning author Stella Duffy

Former Write Queer London winner Keith Jarrett

Paul Burston (centre) Keith Jarr (far right)

Performance poet Sophia Blackwell

And writer Joe Storey-Scott

There’ll be tales of teenage crushes, unrequited love and secret longings across crowded bars and classrooms. And hopefully there’ll be a few laughs too. Love is a funny old business, and if you can’t look back and laugh at your younger love-struck self, then you probably need to lighten up a bit.

Valentine Late
Come to the Museum of London for our spectacular annual Valentine late. Alongside open galleries and a Valentine themed bar, try out some seductive Latin dance moves as Stardustball lead starters classes in the Cha Cha Cha and Rumba. Make vintage Valentine cards at a paper-cutting workshop; enjoy short storyreadings in the Pleasure Gardens by London’s most up-and-coming gay authors; join curators at an object-handling table to find out about risqué ‘x-rated’ objects from the Museum’s storerooms; and sample some sensational aphrodisiac love philters by London’s most creative catering duo Bompas & Parr, recently featured on Heston Blumenthal’s Feast.
Minimum age: 18
Fee £6 (concs £4.5): advanced booking required. Buy tickets here
In partnership with Polari
Dates and times
Monday, 14 February, 18.30 – 22.00

Gold finger!

Last week saw the second Continue Creating workshop for 2010. This is part of the Inclusion Programme and past participants of all projects are invited back to a workshop every month. It’s social, fun and a way of maintaining a relationship between the Museum and our friends. May’s workshop saw us making C19th style Jumpin’ Jack puppets. Sadly, I can’t seem to upload all the images so here are two of the stars. As you can see, they have a contemporary twist!

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.

This month milliner Isabel Benavides facilitated some divine fashion creations suitable for the most stylish of you out there.  I was impressed that such hats could be made in a two hour workshop!

Isabel tells us more about the session:

‘I was invited to make hats with the participants at my very first Late Create on 6 November. Before we began creating our gorgeous pieces, we talked about the museum’s hat collection and how it is stored. In particular we focused on the teaching resources of a milliner who taught hat making in London during the 1950s and 60s.

I showed participants a few quick folding and curling techniques using sinamey (a straw-like fabric made from banana plant fibres) to get everyone started. Then everyone began to design and make their own fascinators using a range of materials including feathers, sinamey, veiling, ribbons and beads.

The results were impressive and all the designs ideas were really unique and original. We finished off the session by taking photos of the completed pieces. And then, of course, I had the chance to try on a few…!!’

Click on this link to have a look at some of the great hats.

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and sculpture.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.

This month artist Emily Candela worked with the group to create a huge temporary sculpture inspired by the Museum of London’s 1559 painting, Nimrod supervising the construction of the Tower of Babel by Martin Van Valckenborgh.

Liam, a member of the group explains how the sculpture was made:

‘This months Late:Create was sculpture. The inspiration was a building called the Tower of Babel. Instead of copying it from a picture we covered it in all kinds of materials so it symbolises the building giving it a new artistic look. I hope you can see the resemblance!’

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and sculpture.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.

The workshop was lead by poet Meryl Pugh, and here, our regular blogger Liam, tells us more:

‘This months Late:Create was poetry. We were taught that there are different ways of writing poetry – some rhyme and some don’t. We learnt how about consonance, which means using similar sounds in words.  For example, bored and board. We also talked about assonance, which means using the same sounds such as ‘ard’ in lard and hard.

Next we started writing. We each had an object from the museum and had to describe its features, what it was used for and who used it. We went into the galleried to collect this information. Next we were ready to write a poem. Meryl helped us by writing the first word or two of each sentence and we filled in the rest using the ideas and words we had gathered.’

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work. Future workshops include sculpture and hat-making. The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.

Photographer Fil Gierlinski lead August’s Late:Create session, and the group learned how to create that perfect picture.

Our regular blogger, Liam, tells us more:

‘This month’s Late:Create was photography. Fil, the photographer, showed us how a picture captures the texture and shape of an object. When learnt how to take pictures close up using the camera’s macro setting. We paired up and went outside taking close-ups of anything we could find. We took photos of walls, railings, pavements, stairs and anything with an unusual surface. We produced some eye-catching images. We then took the cameras into the museum galleries and from different angles captured an object that would tell us a story about it – its shape – its texture – and what it was. Finally we watched a slideshow of everyone’s work.’

See more photos of the workshop here!

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1^st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and sculpture.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.

Writer Rachel Warrington lead July’s Late:Create session and a group of budding scribes were born.

A group member, Liam, tells us more:

‘This month’s activity was creative writing, lead by Rachel who gave us some simple tasks to get us started. We jotted down answers to questions about our journey to the Museum, such as what we did before we arrived and what we thought at the time.  We turned these answers into a poem and then turned the poem into an artist’s book using old maps of London as covers.

Next we each chose a painting from the collection and picked a person out of the image. We wrote down the thoughts of that person regarding what’s going on around them. After that we jotted down what we know about the picture and tried to relate own experiences to those in the picture.  We combined what we thought the person was thinking and our own perception of the picture to create sentences together to give us a poem or story.’

Poems will be posted here soon!

See more photos from the workshop here.

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and photography.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk