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

By Meriel Jeater, Museum of London Curator

Here is a brief snapshot of some research I have recently undertaken to understand the evolution of London’s city wall. A section of the Roman city wall still survives in a garden outside the Museum of London. I mention these remains on my tours of the Roman fort gate, which still exist in a room next to the London Wall car park. It is sometimes tricky to explain to visitors why the wall, while having Roman origins, is made mostly from Victorian brick and includes two medieval towers. The short answer is that over the centuries, as London’s population outgrew its ancient city wall, buildings were built up against the wall, gradually hiding it from view. Then in WWII, large areas of the City of London were destroyed or damaged in The Blitz. After the war the ancient remains of the city wall were uncovered in the rubble. The Roman foundations of the city wall still exist in several places at ground level but the wall above them is actually medieval or more modern.

I discovered that the section of city wall, next to what is now the Museum of London, had been integrated into a line of Victorian warehouses and shops, which explained the brickwork now visible. These were bombed in the 1940s and pulled down after WWII.

This is the current view of the garden with the remains of the city wall. The tower in the foreground is one of a set of medieval towers added to the city wall in the 13th century. Notice that the interior of the tower is now made from brick, which was added when it became part of the Victorian structures.

I always wondered what these shops looked like before they were wiped out so I could compare that with the view today. I hunted through the Museum’s image collection and through the many maps in the Museum of London’s Library to see if I could find out more. Here’s what I found…

This is a detail from an Ordnance Survey map of London, dating to between 1894 and 1896. It shows the area as it was before the bombing raids changed it completely. Where the Museum of London now stands was a street called Castle Street. If you study the map you can find Castle Street, lined with shops. You’ll also see a dotted line at the back of the shops on the right-hand (east) side of the street – this is the line of the ancient city wall. These shops enclose the city wall entirely – the city wall has become their back wall. You can also see the words ‘REMAINS OF TOWER’ amongst these Castle Street buildings. This is the medieval tower from the foreground of the garden photo.

I found another map from 1925 which noted all the numbers of the buildings on Castle Street. It showed that the building that had enclosed the medieval tower was number seven.

By kind permission of the Commissioner of the City of London Police

I searched the Museum’s object database to see if we had any photographs of Castle Street and this photo turned up. It shows Castle Street after The Blitz. If you look closely at the shop fronts you can see the building numbers – the shop in the centre of the picture is number seven. This is the shop that had the medieval tower inside. The back wall of all these shops was the city wall. I was very excited by this discovery. I can now stand by the city wall during my tours and hold up this image and show visitors the huge changes that have occurred in the area over the last century.

Here I am giving a tour of the remains of the Roman fort gate, which would have been part of the city wall. These were discovered during excavations in 1956. Parts of these remains (mostly obscured by the tour group standing in this photo) were found underneath what had been a gentlemen’s urinal in the centre of Falcon Square at the south end of Castle Street. Have a look at the Ordnance Survey map of 1894-6 to see if you can spot it.

To find out more, come along on a tour of the Roman fort gate remains on the third Friday of the month (free tickets issued on a first-come-first-served basis). Details are available on the Museum of London website.

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.

By Geoffrey Harrison, artist-in-residence at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Pathology Museum and Galleries

I’ve been influenced by medicine and anatomy all my life. Both my parents were medical illustrators and my childhood was spent surrounded by specimens of one sort or another.

I’m really lucky to have been able to access the collection at St Bart’s Pathology Museum and have spent many happy hours drawing there. While it began as an important teaching resource, the museum collection is now an artifact documenting medical and pathological procedure, and also, since many of the specimens were collected locally, provides an important social record.

The series of drawings and paintings I’ve been working on is inspired by the anatomical drawings and practice of historical artists who investigated the structural support of the human body, from Leonardo Da Vinci through to Thomas Godart, (whose illustration can be seen at the Pathology Museum).

I’m really interested in the idea that an organism can be self-reflecting or self-creating and so I draw organs or body parts that connect in unexpected ways, or loop back on themselves like a Möbius strip. I happened upon the term ‘Autopoiesis’ meaning ‘self-creation’ (Greek: Auto “self”; and Poiesis “creation or production”), which seemed to really chime with some of the paradoxical intestinal loop drawings I do, and set me off looking for other things to connect up.

I’m really looking forward to running the workshop at the Museum of London late on 31 October. It’s a great way to take a light-hearted look at anatomy and art and I’m hoping to be able to talk to lots of people about my work.

Geoffrey Harrison is the Artist in Residence at St Bart’s Pathology Museum  and will be  running a Halloween card-making sessions, based on his anatomical illustrations, at the Doctors and Dissection late on Halloween at the Museum of London.

Doctors and Dissection late
Museum of London
Wednesday 31 Oct, 7-9.45pm
Book in advance £10 (concs £9, Friends FREE)
Book tickets online or via the box Office on 020 7001 9844.

For more information on Geoffrey Harrison’s work visit his website and to learn more about the St Bart’s Pathology Museum please contact Steve Moore s.moore@qmul.ac.uk or take a look online.

By Michael Pollitt of snipelondon.com

1. London is infinite – There are so many people in so many places doing so many things. All of those people and places and things are potential blog posts. And the city is so big and so old that every street, and the history of every decade of every street, is a potential blog post. London is an infinity of interesting things. The hard part is choosing where to begin.

2. London has some great blogs – These other blogs aren’t competition, that’s not the way it works. If you’re talking about something that’s interesting to people, they’ll read you, and if someone else is talking about it, they’ll read them as well. You can even help them out by linking to each other. It’s not dog eat dog, it’s the more the merrier. This is a nice environment for a blog to grow up in.

3. Blog writers and blog readers are creatures of habit – Personally (and blogs are intensely personal things), I find that the more I blog, the more I want to blog. And the more readers read the blog, the more they want to read. Habitual posting will also prevent your blog from joining the Ozymandian ruins of half-finished blogs which litter the outer deserts of the internet.

4. You can make your own rules but it does help to have some – The great opportunity of blogging is that you can say anything, in any way you want. The great danger of blogging is that you can say anything, in any way you want. It helps to make yourself some rules, such as what topics to focus on, what policy to adopt on exclamation marks, and how many biscuits to reward yourself with for each completed post. Once you’ve done that, you can have some fun finding ways to get around them!

5. Blogging is an underrated way of learning – If you’re curious about how the world works, or in Snipe’s case how London works, then writing a blog is a great way of finding out. It’s like doing a degree, except you get to set all the questions and mark your own answers. You also get to meet some interesting people and muck about with words. That makes blogging fun.

Michael Pollitt is on the panel for Behind the Blog, taking place at the Museum of London on 17 October from 7pm. Behind the Blog will be chaired by Dave Hill, Guardian.co.uk London blogger and political commentator. The discussion will explore what blogging means for Londoners.

Joining Michael and Dave is Now.Here.This. blog editor for Time Out, Sonya Barber; Chloe McCloskey, publishing editor of Le Cool, a popular weekly online magazine; and Ian Mansfield, who writes about interesting things to do and that he has done on his blog IanVisits.

Tickets are £7 and available online and via the box office 020 7001 9844

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…

Pot Idol is a contest to find the ceramic star of tomorrow! The winner will be given its time to shine and brought out from the archives at the Museum of London’s Festival of British Archaeology event, Hands-on pots, taking place on 21 and 22 July.

Over the last couple of months we have presented 6 hopeful pots for your consideration and asked you to decide which you would like to win the coveted title of Pot Idol.

The votes are in, and the winner of Pot Idol 2012, with 50% of the vote, is…Money Box!

This 16th – 17th century money box would have been used to store coins in and then smashed to get the coins out, just like a modern piggy bank. Most ceramic money boxes are found broken. This one has been repaired next to the slit for the coins but originally it had a large hole in it where the owner had broken it open. Archaeologists found a lot of money box tops during the excavations of the Rose Theatre in Southwark, indicating that money boxes were used to collect entrance fees from the audience. The money boxes were so cheap that they would have been smashed to get the collected money after the performances. Some of the money boxes may also have been used by people selling food and drink to the audience. This one is made from Surrey/Hampshire Border Ware.

The Festival of British Archaeology runs from 14-29 July 2012. Join staff at the Museum of London for an exploration into the vital role that ceramics have played in the history of the capital. Discover how pots were made and why, and try crafting your own. A special weekend of family activities will take place on 21 and 22 July.

> Find out more about the Museum’s Festival of British Archaeology events
> Find out more about the Festival of British Archaeology

Yes, it’s the moment we have all been waiting for…the final of Pot Idol 2012. The six finalists have one last chance to win your hearts and then it is over to you to pick your favourite ceramic star. The champion will not only win the coveted title of Pot Idol, they will also appear at the Museum’s Festival of British Archaeology event, Hand-on pots, on 21 and 22 July.

So here are the contenders one last time…

Will you pick our first contestant, Imbrex, from Lime Street? Imbrex is a fragment of Roman roof tile. Not only would Imbrex have once adorned a public building in Roman London, it also bears an official production stamp.

Do you want to see contestant number two win, Amphora? Amphora is also Roman but is part of a storage vessel. The items stored in these vessels came from the far reaches of the Roman empire and contained Roman favourites like fish sauce. The pointy shape made it easy to store on a boat.

Is it contestant number three from Covent Garden that has won your heart, Loomweight? Loomweight is from Saxon London and was once used on a warp-weighted weaving loom. This shapely ceramic shows that there was a thriving textile industry in the area.

Is contestant number four, Cooking Pot, a clear winner for you? Another curvaceous contender, Cooking Pot has a rounded bottom making it easier to place on a fire. Complete Medieval cooking pots are hard to come by. We have all experienced an accident or two in the kitchen.

Contestant number five is a looker, Drug Jar but is it a winner? Not only is Drug Jar decorative it is also very functional. Once containing medicines, ointments or cosmetics this jar would have either been reused or sold back to the apothecary from which it came.

Or will it be contestant number six that is crowned Pot Idol, Money Box? Money Box would have once been used in a Shakespearean playhouse to collect money from theatre goers. Furthermore, Money Box lends its name to the modern term box office.

Now it’s over to you. Pick your favourite ceramic and help them get one step closer to winning Pot Idol 2012.

Please cast your vote here https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y3D32B6.

The winner will be announced on 17 July and make its debut appearance at Hand-on pots on 21 and 22 July.

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!

Museum of London Docklands will be closed between 9 July and 16 September to host Deutsches Haus, the official base for the German National Olympic Committee.  Activity will include Deutsches Haus, a private hospitality base, and Fanfest, a public celebration of German sport and culture. German-Sport Marketing tell us about the final preparations. “With the Olympic Games being less than five weeks away, preparations for the transformation of the Museum of London Docklands into Deutsche Haus, and the associated Fan Fest, are entering the final stage.

German Sport-Marketing, who is organising the house for the German Olympic Sports Confederation, together with Messe Düsseldorf, kicked-off the final weeks with the last meeting of the steering committee, before everyone will meet in London.

The redecoration of the Museum is already underway, as lavatories are rebuilt, internal partitions are built in and the technical infrastructure is updated. The larger part of this temporary modification will be done after the Museum closes to the public on 9 July.

When the Deutsches Haus opens on 26 July, 220 people will be working in and around it to make sure that the expected 1000 guest per day enjoy a truly Olympic atmosphere.

The Deutsches Haus will provide guests with its own TV programme and a daily newsletter, which is written by five contributors on-site and quests have already started to register for accreditation.

Fourteen partners from German economy exclusively support Deutsches Haus and Deutsches Haus Paralympics. The fourteen convened with German Sports-Marketing just last week to discuss their activities on site and their status of preparations.”