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!

World Stories: Young Voices – My Experience, Jake

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^rd June 2012.

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

Jake and Museum Collective members run an Arctic-inspired workshop for the public

A. My name is Jake and I’m 17. I’m a college student studying for my A-levels and became part of the Museum Collective group in about October last year. We are a bit like a youth advisory group for the museum staff to test their ideas for the new gallery, whether it be marketing, QR codes or what is actually in the gallery. All to try and make sure it will attract young people and really interest them.

Q. What kind of things have you done?

A. I became one of three Co-ordinators who meet as often as we can to get plans together for the collective meetings and liaise with other museum staff whenever they need the Collective’s advice. I have also attended a World Stories project meeting to find out what it is really like to create a whole new gallery from scratch and give help wherever needed as a representative of the group. We have also tried to get as many people engaged as we can and to spread the word.

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

A. How priceless museums are, not just seeing into the past but allowing us to see all the similarities and differences between cultures that are around today and that we shouldn’t take anything for granted.

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

A. Being part of the group has greatly improved my ability to speak to groups of people who I have never met before, and being a Co-ordinator I feel I have become more responsible. I definitely take pride in being part of the group and being one of three whose job it is to nurture and push the group to be bigger and better than it is already, we will run the museum eventually! I think also simply being in a museum environment has opened my eyes to see the bigger picture, so to speak, and look for the meaning behind artefacts as opposed to saying “Oh that looks nice”.

Jake and Becky check out the gallery under construction

Q. What did you enjoy the most?

A. Working with enthusiastic and intelligent people of my own age to aid the museum staff to create what will the best museum gallery in the country!!!!

World Stories: out with the old…

Out with the old…

On 3 January 2012 the World Art gallery in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery closed in preparation for the new World Stories: Young Voices gallery, opening 23 June 2012.

For three months staff have been removing objects from their cases and preparing the objects for storage.

A difficult case for curator Laura, cheering that it is open at last

After opening the cases – and this was sometimes a feat in itself– each object was inspected. As these objects had been in cases for ten years, it was important to check their condition. The object would then be photographed, measured and carefully packaged. We used ready-made boxes and crates and staff devised some ingenious methods for packing the irregular-shaped objects.

Attack by a deadly fish? No – the malangan flying fish is just being dismantled

One of the dismantled fish’s wings

Visitors using the lift next to the closed gallery may well have been puzzled by the sounds coming from behind the hoardings. These mysterious emanations were in fact sticky-tape ripping, bubble-wrap popping, case hammering and low mutterings.

Objects prepared for storage

Objects prepared for storage

I felt sad closing the lids over familiar objects wondering when they will be seen again. But it is also exciting that the new gallery is beginning to take shape and that there will be new objects on display– and some familiar ones will be back too.

The empty gallery

… and in with the new

Lucy Faithful, Assistant Curator of World Art