Features

A catalyst for inspiration

Ylva French and Clare Moloney explore the growth in arts activities in museums during this year?s Museums and

Ylva French and Clare Maloney
6 min read

Light installation of the alphabet

Museums and Galleries Month (MGM) is a unique cross-promotion and collaboration between museums and art galleries. It started in 2000 as a merger of Museums Week and Galleries Week. Part of the MGM arts programme brief was to bring more art galleries into MGM with interesting and innovative programmes. This year there are some excellent projects taking place, such as the ‘Indelible’ exhibition at Fabrica Gallery in Brighton and the late night events programme led by BALTIC and Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle and Gateshead (see p10). On a more promotional level, it is great to see art galleries and museums in Bath, Birmingham and Newcastle/Gateshead working together to open late with lively, entertaining programmes for a wide range of visitors.

Putting a national campaign such as MGM together on a limited budget is a challenge. Making an impact with so much else going on requires either very large funds or ingenuity. We now focus on our PR programme and less on generic print. This year we have again created a range of branded templates available on the website which enables museums and galleries to produce their own print to suit them. We also produce limited quantities of posters and postcards for those museums unable to do their own print and also for libraries and tourist information centres. Our partnership with the 24 Hour Museum (shortly to be known as Culture 24) is also essential to success – last year, visits to this, the UK’s leading cultural website, reached record levels. As the site is transformed, a whole range of new media opportunities will open up to MGM. We have also set up our own MGM2008 Facebook Group, a wiki site to enable reciprocal exchange between museums and galleries, and have just launched ‘Museum of Me’, an interactive website dedicated to exhibition space.

A key element of MGM2008 is the drive to spread best practice to those who have yet to dip their toe in the arts water. Many museums around the UK have already established programmes and projects with visual artists interpreting their collections, creating commissions and working with visitors in creative workshops. There have been inspirational initiatives in unusual museum settings – sculpture from ‘rubbish’ at SS Great Britain, where schoolchildren worked with artist Barbie McLure to create some unusual works of art; ‘All about art’ at the Tunbridge Wells Museum, involving adults and children creating their own silhouettes; and the definitive Museumaker project launched in the East Midlands as part of MGM, delivering commissioned works of art and crafts and even public seating for museums in the region.

To encourage more museums to develop this type of work, The Campaign for Museums, which organises MGM, appointed Clare Moloney as Arts Coordinator last year with the task of delivering the first dedicated MGM Arts programme. With support from engage (National Association for Gallery Education) we set up a series of seminars around the country specifically aimed at those who had not worked with artists before, generally smaller museums and heritage attractions. Three seminars in Birmingham, Newcastle and Exeter were well attended and enjoyed the benefit of two to three working artists and curators sharing their experiences with the delegates. Levels of experience varied enormously, but the feedback was extremely positive. In each case the location, at the Ikon, BALTIC and Spacex, provided an important visual arts ingredient and stimulus.

Training and networking

In addition, the MGM team has taken part in other seminars and workshops around the UK to spread the word about arts and artists. While everyone working in museums can see the benefit of working with artists in terms of attracting new audiences, giving new impetus to staff and bringing collections to life, there are some real barriers. Mostly these are
practical, relating to resources in terms of staff time and cash to invest in materials and artists’ time. For some delegates, it was a question of bringing others on board to see the value of working with artists. Others had had unsatisfactory experiences when poorly equipped and unprepared to deal with an artistic project.

In the seminars, an experienced team, including artists, was able to deal with some of these problems, including how to find the right artist for a project. The MGM Arts Tool Kit, produced by The Campaign for Museums and engage, provides further advice for those who weren’t able to attend (available at http://www.mgm.org.uk). The question of resources and particularly funding is a wider issue, and here museums starting on an arts project need to think carefully about the timescale in terms of accessing grants from their arts council, Awards for All and other sources. Given the timescale, it was clear that the arts programme of MGM2008 would represent the beginning of a growth in arts projects in smaller museums and act as a catalyst for the future.

New projects

Nevertheless, over half the museums represented at the seminars are setting up new initiatives for MGM2008. The National Glass Centre (NGC) in Sunderland is teaming international new media group United Visual Artists (UVA) up with a group of young local people to produce a series of artworks. The young people will work with UVA and glass blowing specialists to make their own glass-blown works, and attend workshops with UVA to develop ideas to produce a series of final artworks. These works will be displayed at the NGC during MGM. The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter and the Museum of Dartmoor Life have joined forces to produce the exhibition ‘Dartmoor Rocks’. The show will include contemporary arts works made by local artists inspired by the landscape of Dartmoor. The Ropewalk in Lincolnshire is working with artist Jonathan Korejko on a number of workshops entitled ‘Paper from Old Rope’. The workshops, directly referencing the history of its building as a rope factory, will enable children to learn how to create handmade paper from d rope, string and other plant fibres.