Behind the Scenes, 11 October 2017: Creating a video legacy for The Box

by Lizzy Allen, Soundview Media

Soundview is a Plymouth-based video production company. We love our city and have been excited to watch its regeneration and growth in recent years. So we were really pleased, when in 2015,  we were asked to create a video legacy for one of the symbols of that regeneration: The Box. Our task was to help record the transformation of Plymouth’s Museum and Art Gallery, former Central Library and St Luke’s Church into a multi-million pound cultural and heritage centre. The result would be a series of videos capturing the project’s vision: building a museum for the 21st century, where Plymouth’s rich history could be celebrated under one roof alongside a really ambitious visual arts offer.

The Soundview Team – From L to R: Chris, Lizzy, Katie, Issy and Gareth

The videos would help inform current and future generations. Where pen and quill once recorded the events of Plymouth’s past, contemporary video technology would record the changes happening in the heart of the city.

Being involved with such an important project has been rewarding and occasionally surprising. So far we’ve filmed aerial acrobats, dancers and poets, part of the sensational contemporary performance to launch The Box brand in Drake Circus and more. Of course, as film makers, another highlight was our shoot at the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA). The SWFTA team gave us access to their wealth of film and video, a moving reminder of Plymouth’s past. This resource will be moved to the Media Lab, one of main galleries inside The Box. It’s a privilege to think that one day our videos might also become part of that archive.

The launch of The Box brand took place in Drake Circus in July 2017

Our most surprising encounters have involved the Museum’s collections. We came face to face with a Lamprey (admittedly a `pickled’ or preserved one) when filming the spirit collection. Over 4,000 jars of creatures, some of them the stuff of nightmares, and many of them over 150 years old, were moved to a temporary site. We also never imagined we would be present at the wrapping of an ancient Egyptian mummy coffin from Thebes. Now carefully packaged and in storage, this coffin will take pride of place, alongside other iconic objects, when The Box opens in 2020.

A specimen from the Museum and Art Gallery’s spirit collection

Other highlights to date have included filming different aspects of the Museum On Tour programme, particularly this summer’s Ropewalks performances, where we met some interesting characters who were able to tell us what life was like on the Barbican hundreds of years ago. Filming last year’s Illuminate parade at night was breath-taking.

Colourful characters from Ropewalks which we really enjoyed filming

In addition to key events, we have captured pivotal stages relating to the building and construction work. From the initial ground-breaking ceremony, to the demolition of modern extensions and outbuildings.

Chris filming the groundbreaking ceremony for The Box

We will continue to film each important moment as this flagship project continues on its journey towards its completion in time for the 2020 Mayflower commemorations. See the Soundview blog for our favourite moments as well as some of our other projects.

To take a look at all the videos we’ve produced so far for The Box visit the YouTube channel.

Museum on Tour, 4 October 2017: A hectic month coming up

by Jo Clarke, Marketing and Communications Officer

We have a busy month coming up as a number of the projects we’ve been working on this year really get into their stride.

The ‘Poppies: WAVE’ installation on the Hoe has had amazing feedback since it went on display in the summer. Our ‘Plymouth Remembers’ programme inspired by it includes a range of events this month from family activities to guided walks to photography tutorials – all of which are free. We’re hoping to announce one more special event as part of this programme soon which we’re very excited about – watch this space!

The ‘We The People Are The Work’ exhibition opened at the end of September to coincide with the Plymouth Art Weekender and remains on display throughout October.

Our commission at the Council House by artist Peter Liversidge takes the form of a sign painting ‘factory’ where people get placards made. You can find out a little more about it in our video clip.

It’s been great to see the photographs everyone’s been posting online of themselves with their signs and the different slogans they’ve chosen. We’ll be sharing collages of them on our social media channels throughout the exhibition.

Elsewhere, our family events will be keeping some of our staff really busy. Half term and the annual Big Draw celebration means we have a series of workshops planned, including making banners, creating moving images and devising flick book animations. Many of our sessions are artist-led which means attendees get the chance to tap into a range of specialist skills while they’re having some holiday fun.

Our new brochure is out and contains all our Museum On Tour information until the end of the year. Thousands of copies are currently being distributed around the city so pick one up from your local library, the Tourist Information Centre, the Council House and a range of other venues.

Now our programme until the end of 2017 is confirmed we’re turning our attention to 2018 when there are a number of important anniversaries connected to Plymouth taking place. We’re one of the partners for the Atlantic Project, a contemporary art festival currently being developed for next autumn. We’ve also just made an announcement about the 2018 Plymouth History Festival. The dates for the festival have been confirmed as 5 May to 3 June and people are being asked to send their event information through by 15 December.

We’ll have more Museum On Tour updates in November. In the meantime, we’ll look forward to hopefully seeing you at one or more of our offsite events over the next few weeks.

Museum On Tour, 7 September 2017: We The People Are The Work

by Jo Clarke, Marketing and Communications Officer

In 2016 Plymouth was awarded £635,000 from Arts Council England’s ‘Ambition for Excellence’ funding scheme. The money has enabled a number of organisations in the city to come together to establish ‘Horizon’ – a two-year visual arts programme which, amongst other things, will support a series of talent development opportunities for artists and enable four major arts festivals and events to take place.

Two of these major events will be this and next year’s Plymouth Art Weekender (22-24 September). An international public art festival called the ‘Atlantic Project’ is scheduled for 2018 (more about this in the future). First though, we have ‘We The People Are The Work’.

The Council House, Armada Way, Plymouth

We’ve been collaborating on this project with four other arts venues: Peninsula Arts at the University of Plymouth, The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth Arts Centre and KARST. It will take the form of a multi-site exhibition which opens on 22 September. As the Museum and Art Gallery is closed our venue is the Council House. The exhibition has been curated by Simon Morrissey, the director of a Frome-based organisation called ‘Foreground’ which aims to bring new art to new audiences. Simon has been assisted by Plymouth-based producer Vickie Fear.

Six international artists will be showcased in ‘We The People Are The Work’. You can find out more about them all here.

Artist Peter Liversidge photographed by Martyn Hayne

The artist whose work will be displayed at the Council House is Lincoln-born, London-based Peter Liversidge.

Liversidge is an artist who ‘experiments with the idea of what is possible’, and who has always been interested in work that finds itself slightly outside of what is, at first, thought of as ‘fine art’.

All his artworks begin at his kitchen table with him sitting alone writing proposals on a manual typewriter. Some of these come to fruition, others don’t. What they all have in common is their ‘gently persistent questioning of the world around us’.

Over the last ten years Liversidge has worked with organisations in the UK, Germany, Holland, Iceland and the USA. In 2016 he developed a collection of songs and vocalisations inspired by the public’s relationship with Tate Modern’s iconic Turbine Hall. ‘The Bridge (A Choral Piece for Tate Modern)’ was performed in the Hall by a choir of 500 amateur singers.

The Bridge (Choral Piece for Tate Modern), June 2016, courtesy of the artist

For this particular commission the audience was just as much a part of the work as the work itself. This has interesting parallels with the ideas and aspirations behind our project, which has seen all six artists involve locally-based communities in the development or production of their artworks.

Liversidge’s ‘Sign Paintings for Plymouth’ brings together the ideas and voices of a range of individuals – many of which often go unheard. These provide the inspiration for a series of placards that you will be able to see being made in the Council House. The signs will be spread around the city, used in a ritual burning in the bonfire on The Hoe on 5 November and in a special Closing Day Party on 18 November. Liversidge will also have a temporary public artwork on the flagpoles on The Hoe in October and November.

Curator Simon Morrissey and artist Peter Liversidge in a workshop session with members of Plymouth’s Youth Parliament

Liversidge has worked with a number of participants including children from Salisbury Road Primary School, the Pioneers Project at Tamar View Community Resource Centre and members of Plymouth’s Youth Parliament.

If you’d like to find out more about him this 2009 article from The Guardian and 2013 ‘In The Studio’ feature from The Independent are interesting reads. You can also hear him give a Lunchtime Talk on Tuesday 7 November at the Plymouth Athenaeum.

Take a look at the website for full details about the exhibition and the wide-ranging programme of events that’s taking place while it’s on display.

‘We The People Are The Work’ runs from 22 September to 18 November.

Museum On Tour, 9 August 2017: In at the deep end!

by Stacey Turner, Events and Audience Development Coordinator

Nothing quite makes you learn like jumping into the deep end. That has been my mantra since starting as the Events and Audience Development Coordinator for Plymouth Museums Galleries Archives in late April 2017.

Local Studies Day, the first event in the city-wide Plymouth History Festival programme, was my initiation. Since then I have been lucky enough to have worked on some awesome projects, from exhibition previews through to launching The Box at Drake Circus. Not bad for the first twelve weeks in a new job!

My first event was the 2017 Local Studies Day which kicked off the Plymouth History Festival

I have quickly learned that for an event to be successful we must all be working as one team. We release a new exhibitions and events programme each season and each department has a crucial role in the process. From initial concepts and ideas with the Programmes and Collections Teams to procurement and bookings with the Business Support Team (affectionately known as BuST), support from Front of House and advertising and social media support from Marketing.

It all adds up to a wide-ranging events and activities programme that we are currently calling our ‘Museum On Tour’ programme. Every 3 months we launch a new series of, on average 30+ activities that aim to engage with all our audiences in different ways.

Our autumn/winter programme will be released shortly and the team have come up with some cracking events for the rest of 2017.

Out and about at a recent community event

We’re one of the partners for ‘We The People Are The Work’, a multi-site visual arts project with an exhibition that will be based across 5 sites in Plymouth, including the Council House. Opening to coincide with the start of the Plymouth Art Weekender (22–24 September), internationally renowned artists from Britain, France, Canada and Mexico will present their work to the public. Over 40 events will run at the various sites until mid-November. The perfect antidote to the days that will soon be drawing in and the lack of Love Island, Poldark and Game of Thrones……….

We’ll also have lots of other events and activities happening between now and Christmas – details of which will shortly go live on our website. I hope to see you soon at one or more of them!

Museum On Tour, 7 June 2017: New exhibitions and events

by Jo Clarke, Marketing and Communications Officer

Summer was always a fun time at the Museum and Art Gallery before we closed. We would make sure we had exhibitions on display that were of interest to local residents and tourists. Our holiday workshop programme brought many families into the building and gave children lots of opportunities to be creative.

Thankfully as a result of our ‘Museum On Tour’ programme it’s business as usual this year, even though we’re having to use a range of offsite locations instead.

One of the major elements of this is the exhibition of work by much-loved artist Beryl Cook that we’re staging at the Council House from 24 June to 9 September. Cook lived in Plymouth for many years and we have three works by her in our permanent collections.

What’s so special about this exhibition is that we have co-curated it with Beryl’s family. They were the most important thing in her life. As well as providing us with access to some of her earliest and quirkiest works, working in collaboration with them has given us a range of personal insights into her and the people she loved the most.

The exhibition will be divided up into a series of different themes including fame, family and friends and fantasy. There will be a special range of merchandise available to purchase – a new experiment for us at the Council House.

The exhibition has also given us lots of inspiration for events and we’ll have a host of talks, tours and family activities on offer. You can find out more about all of these from the what’s on section of our website. It’s great to have an exhibition that we can generate so many ideas from.

Image John Cook 2017. www.ourberylcook.com

This work shown above is one of the paintings that will feature in the exhibition. Many people local to Plymouth will recognise the location as the famous Elvira’s cafe in Stonehouse! A man sits at one table drinking a large mug of tea while a dog watches its owner eating a sausage sandwich at another. The woman behind the counter who is serving a customer with a piece of cake is Teresa, Beryl’s daughter-in-law. Teresa will join our exhibition curator Hilary Bracegirdle for a lunchtime talk next month during which she will share her memories and stories.

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Another exciting development for us over the summer are our ‘Out and About’ events. Staff and volunteers will be taking a series of themed activities to local community festivals across the city and beyond over the next few months. We began with a successful event at the Freedom Community Festival last weekend and will also be at:

• Contemporary Craft Festival, Bovey Tracey: 9-11 June
• Armed Forces Day, Plymouth Hoe: 24 June
• St Levan Fair, Plymouth: 15 July
• Love Parks Week, Whitleigh Hub, Plymouth: 20 July
• Plymouth Play Day: 2 August – a venue for this will be confirmed soon
• Devonport Park Festival, Plymouth: 20 August

If you’re planning to attend any of these events make sure you come and say hello to us on our stand. Here are some images from the Freedom Community Festival to close today’s post. People made banners and badges highlighting the things that are important to them. Thanks very much to everyone who came along and got stuck in!

Museum On Tour, 10 May 2017: Plymouth History Festival

by Jo Clarke, Marketing and Communications Officer

Hopefully many of you will be aware that the Plymouth History Festival began on Saturday (6 May).

This is the fifth year in a row that it’s taken place and I have been involved with helping to co-ordinate and promote it since it began.

The festival runs until 4 June. Many people might think this is the busiest time for me on the project – but the bulk of the work actually takes place between December and April.

Myself and other colleagues who are responsible for event programming usually meet in early October to decide the dates and any particular themes for the following year. We then announce these in the press and give the individuals, societies and organisations who want to be involved around 2-3 months to confirm their events with us. We also have to make sure we have our own events organised by the deadline!

Once all the information is in I have my first major task on my hands: editing everything into a consistent format, double checking dates, times, address and contact information, creating a diary of listings for each day and then using it all to build our website. I usually put this live by mid-February.

After this my next major task is to take this information, source around 40 different high resolution images to go with it, write the foreword, draft copy about the latest developments with the History Centre and then brief all of this in to a graphic designer so they can produce the festival brochure. This is a massively popular piece of print.

While the brochure is being designed I source the printer, book advertising space in as many of the local what’s on publications as the budget will allow, liaise with our distribution company and raise the relevant purchase orders. Then there’s the job of proof reading the brochure, running it past everyone involved, briefing any amends back to the graphic designer, proof reading it again, signing it off, getting the artwork to the printer, checking their proof to make sure everything is fine with the colours, pictures and fonts, and then finally approving it for print.

Once the brochures have been delivered our distribution company collects around half of them and gets to work dropping them off at a range of venues across Plymouth and the travel to work area. The other half are distributed through our own networks, at the events we attend throughout the month and by the festival event providers – all of whom have been brilliant about coming to the Museum to collect their copies this year.

By this point I will have also sent out information about the festival to local media, forwarded the artwork for any adverts we have booked to the relevant publications and planned a social media campaign. The History Festival has its own Facebook and Twitter feeds and in the run up to and during the festival I post and share regular updates. This year we have also produced a series of graphics for the Big Screen in Plymouth’s city centre – I’ve used them in this post. I’ve also been able to secure some of the large format poster sites in the city centre car parks so we have produced a series of posters for these, as well as for the library network and Tourist Information Centre.

I’ve been very proud of the History Festival since it began and as a Service we are hugely grateful to all those who take part. It is a mammoth amount of work – a fact that isn’t necessarily acknowledged the way it should be. Lots of my colleagues from the Arts and Heritage and Library Services are involved too and are running events at different times throughout the month. There is no separate team to deal with the management, coordination, promotion or facilitation of the festival – we are doing all of this on top of our ever-growing commitments to the History Centre.

This year’s festival began with a really successful Local Studies Day and there are nearly 100 different events on this year’s programme including exhibitions and displays, guided walks and tours, talks and presentations, music, film and performance, special events and family activities. There’s real variety on offer for all ages and interests and the range of subjects highlights the depth of Plymouth’s history.

Take a look at the festival website if you haven’t done so already and I hope you enjoy the events you attend. Plymouth History Festival will return in 2018 and we will announce the dates and details a little later in the year!