Background of Stories of The World
For those of you who are unfamilar with this Stories of the World it is a project run by The Cultural Olympaid, aimed at 14-24 year olds to enable them to work along side curators of museum up and down the UK. The young curators have the chance to bring their ideas and concepts to their museum, voicing their opinions on how they would like museums to create exhibitions which will appeal to their age groups. This invovative projects main aim is change the sometimes drab and dated exhibtion layouts of the past and make them exciting and fresh. It gives young curators a chance gain experience behind the scenes at museums which they may never have had access to, and curators to gain a new perspective on exhibtions from the young peoples perpective. Each museum has chosen a topic of interest to build their exhibition on.I am invloved in one of the North East exhibitions, based at The Dorman Musuem, Middlesbrough. It has been a a very thought provoking, exciting and sometimes changelling experience (I would not change a thing). Our group has such a diverse range of young curators from very different backgrounds, at times difficult converation have been had. Although we have always over come these difficulties and found solutions. I feel that the conversations have been the most important lessons to be learnt, as the best ideas always come from differences. It changels each idivdual to come up with a bigger and better idea...as a group!
Our project is based on the journys of Captain Cook, most importantly, the people he encounted on his travels. The foundation of our exhibition is working with source communities to ensure that we stay their voices are head, ensuring that we do not revert back to telling their story for them. Which has been the way museums have conducted exhibtions in the past. So far groups like the Prince's Trust have worked along side Maori artist George Nuku, to create Maori carvings for the exhibition. Another amazing person we have had the pleasure to work with is Aborginal Story teller Franis Firebrace. Who has touched each one of our hearts with his inspirational stories from the Aborginal community.
http://www.journeysofdiscovery.org.uk/home.html to find out more about each exhibition.
