The elephant is on stage! Or was, in 1830, at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. The Talented and Colossal Mademoiselle D'Jeck was on trial in Newcastle, having killed her keeper in Morpeth as he had treated her badly. She was found guilty and fined five shillings - a small sum, as she was earning £20 for each performance at the theatre.
November Club created a promenade performance, based on this true story, which took the audience into unseen parts of the theatre. I carried out the evaluation which showed that it had attracted a new audience, of all ages, to November Club's carefully-researched and quirky show.
Just back from Split in Croatia, where I delivered a day's training on visitor studies for ICOM Croatia, at the Mestrovic Galerija. We talked about how important it is to know who is (and isn't visiting) and what they think about the museum, so that more people will visit. The annual Museums Night visits in Split are extremely successful - but how to increase visitors during the rest of the year? How to encourage tourists to visit? How to encourage local people? The participants went away with plenty of ideas about how to deal with these challenges.
o Szentgotthard in Hungary, near to the Slovenian border, to meet with people representing Slovenes living in Hungary and to discuss how best to present their cultural heritage to visitors. Then to Köszeg, just a kilometer from the Austrian border, to visit the fragrant Patkai Múzeum (the apothecary's museum) whose loft is full of scented medicinal herbs. The 18C pharmacist's shop interior is extravagantly Baroque, and in the gallery there are all manner of startling and alarming cures.
To Norwich, for the Culture Matters conference organised by Norwich HEART, part of the Shaping 24 EU project with Ghent. Plenty of thought-provoking speakers (Loyd Grossman, Charles Landry, Donovan Rypkema amongst others), and challenges for how best to demonstrate the value of cultural heritage. The Norwich 12 buildings (which I managed to visit most of) cover the 1100s to the 21st century and the development of civic, commercial and church buildings. Most visually arresting? It has to be the marble interior of the Norwich Union (now Aviva) Insurance building, but the Guildhall has carefully-constructed flint walls which are worth a close look. Jolliest lions in the land? The ones outside the Civic Hall.
- Slovenia
- Repositories of technology
- A piece of Hungarian social history
- Museum + Heritage Show; Arts Professional
- Evaluation training in Slovenia and Croatia
- Iron Applause in Central Europe
- Escaped Circus Elephant!
- Gold from Afghanistan and Foundling fabrics
- The Old Herring Factory, Djúpavík
- Contemporary art from North Korea
- Nicola appointed to Board: Kuratórium
- Workshop in Hungary
- Evaluation Training in Hungary