World Stories: Young Voices – My Experience, Lucinda

Meet the young people who have been involved in developing the new World Stories: Young Voices Gallery which opens at Brighton Museum and Art gallery on 23 June 2012.

Q. Who are you and how did you get involved?

A. My name is Lucinda and I’m 21. I am a local artist studying at Brighton University who loves Museums and wanted work experience in Museum Services so I joined the Museum Collective to get an insight into how they are run and found out they were creating a new exhibition for young people!

Lucinda running an arctic inspired mask workshop

Q. What did you do?

A. At our Museum Collective meetings we get to work with the professionals at the Museum and advise the curatorial and marketing team on exhibition designs and publicity in order to create an engaging exhibition for young people.

The Museum Collective also creates events and I have created art workshops for families and for the Youth Arts Festival to engage people in their local museum collections.

Q. What has been the most important thing you have learned during this project? 

A. How valuable museums are and how pleasurable it is to learn about the difference and similarities between yours and other countries’ cultures.

Lucinda running a shadow puppet workshop as part of Young Artist Day

Q. What new skills do you feel that you have developed?  

A. I have learnt to be an ambassador for the project in the Stories of the World Steering Group. We meet to discuss the great projects going on across museums nationwide, and have even created a Young Peoples’ Manifesto for Museums to use to guide them in involving young people!

Q. What did you enjoy the most?

A. Working with lots of like minded young people and professionals, voicing our opinions, and seeing them being listened to and materialise.

Lucinda is an artist you can see her work here

World Stories: Young Voices – My Experience, Mike

Meet the young people who have been involved in developing the new World Stories: Young Voices Gallery which opens at Brighton Museum and Art gallery on 23 June 2012.

Mike and mask

Q. Who are you and how did you get involved?

A. Hi, my name is Mike and I’m 19. I first got involved with the project way back in the summertime of 2010 when I was asked to take photos of a project that was being run at my local art group in Whitehawk, in collaboration with Brighton Museum. This led to me becoming the official young person photographer for the project and the museum. After this I got invited into and involved with The Museum Collective.

Mike

Q. What have you done?

A. Mainly, I was the official young person photographer for the project, which was good work experience as I was doing a photography course at college! I got to photograph loads of projects and events, I think the first event I photographed for the museum was White Night 2010

I then joined the Museum Collective and got a say in loads of things to do with the museum too, including events and the development of the new gallery (which I’ve heard rumours that it will contain some of the photos I took for the project).

Q. What has been the most important thing you have learned during this project?

A. I think just how to work with other people and communicate on all different levels. I also learnt, hands on, about professional practice when working as a photographer in a work style role.

Photo taken by Mike

Q. What new skills do you feel that you have developed?  

 A. I feel my photographic skills have improved by the help of working with a range of professional photographers, and also my planning and organisations skills.

Working with the museum has also opened up incredible new opportunities for me even now, like taking photos of different things and even more recently to assist with a one week photography project with other young people, which gave me the experience to teach others! I believe that investing in this experience and working on my skills whilst working with the Museum taught me valuable lessons which later aided me into my employment as a youth worker -which is where I’m at today!

Q. What did you enjoy the most?

A. I enjoyed it all but my absolute favourite thing of all time must’ve been going behind the scenes and seeing how the museum ‘works’ if you like!

Ure View: bringing ancient Greece to life

Ure View is one of four regional projects that are part of World Stories South East. To celebrate the opening of the exhibition a family event was held at the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology on 5 May 2012, with the exhibition open until 31 August 2012.

The event showcased the sculptures and digital animations that were inspired by the Greek pottery held in the museum’s collections.

Display of Greek pottery, courtesy of the Ure Museum

The museum houses around 2,000 ancient Greek and Egyptian archaeological finds in a museum at the University of Reading. Although small, the displays of the collections give a fascinating glimpse into ancient life.

Greek pot, courtesy of the Ure Museum

The young people led the development of the animations and sculpture, giving their perspective on ancient life by interpreting the pottery through their eyes.

Young people handling Greek pottery, courtesy of James Pike

The storyboards created by the young people were then brought to life by digital animator Steve Simons.

The final three films were projected onto the large-scale Greek pot sculptures that were built and decorated by the young participants.

Sculpture and animation, courtesy of the Ure Museum

The family activity day was busy and vibrant, attracting new visitors to the museum. Family groups of all ages played ancient board games similar to modern day draughts, decorated mugs and plates in a Greek style and took part in an activity trail. Steve Simons, the project’s animator was on-hand to give a talk about how the animations were created.

Sonia Rasbery,
World Stories South East Partnership Co-ordinator