The working life of Museum of London

I had some bite-sized staggered posts planned, but instead time/crashing computers/ going on leave has dictated a highlights post of what’s going on at the moment.

Firstly, we welcomed Nanny of the Maroons into our London, Sugar and Slavery Gallery. Queen Nanny is a gallery performance that Lynda  has been working on for a while now with the support of some fantastic and talented writers, musicians and advisors, not least Carlina who plays Nanny:

Queen Nanny looks out with Jamaican Plantation scene behind.

So far, what has been in the gallery is a working performance; script in hand, laptop on ahem, lap, and live acapella singing in place of our soundtrack. This was kept as a working performance so that we could invite active feedback from our Museum visitors and use this to fine tune our final Nanny character.

Discussion with audience members was really useful, the feedback we received was both positive and constructive, and mentioned pace, volume and content of the performance, which we were able to incorporate into rehearsals and revisions over the following weeks.

The final piece will be performed here at Docklands on Saturday at 2.30pm and 3.30pm, and Sunday 2.00pm and 3.00pm (entrance is free!), and will be scheduled into the events programme across both the Museum of London and Docklands sites over the coming months, as well as forming part of a larger Black History event we are planning in October. If you have any queries about Nanny, please feel free to get in touch.

The Crossing the Seas team take a turn in front of the Camera for a group interview.

Onto the Crossing the Seas project now,  and all the interviews have been carried out by Lynda and our expert team of young people from Newham, both behind the camera and conducting the interviews.

Lynda and Freddie set up the shot for an interview.

Lynda is finishing off the edits in order for them to be compressed and installed onto the touch screen interactive in the LSS Gallery, and I’m finishing off the transcripts so they can go into the Museum collections. I’m slightly word blind at this point, but the content of the interviews are so interesting that you don’t mind the length of time it takes to go through the entire dialogue.

I will update you once the interviews are installed, and would like to hear your feedback.

Finally, a beautiful splash of colour:

Detail from Price of Sweetness Bowl.

This year we have two batches of bowls to go into the Gallery; the set that have just gone into the Gallery have been made by a Elders group from the African and Caribbean Voices Association based in Stratford. This was a Women-only group who worked with Historian Angelina Osborne and Ceramicist Licy Clayden to create these beautifully colourful pieces.

The next set of bowls to go in have been made by families visiting Docklands over the half-term, who were inspired by the words of creative writer and performer Breis. While simple in design, the bowls have been decorated with creative and crafty phrases and slogans. When they’re in I’ll put up some images.

I’ll leave you with this lovely detail of a Caribbean Sunset, and don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the Mixtape…….