It was Amy Sanders’ accumulation of her own festival experiences – slime, grime, foul food – that made her realise that June’s annual Glastonbury festival was “just perfect” for a museum intervention.
“Glastonbury is renowned for its filth, its dirt, its mud and awful loos – we had to go,” says Sanders, the programmer of the Wellcome Trust’s Dirt season, which includes an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London as well as a wide range of events and activities elsewhere.
The Wellcome Collection is one of many museums and galleries that sees the UK’s summer music and arts festivals as ripe with opportunities to reach new audiences.
For some years, the organisers of the main festivals (of which Glastonbury, with a site capacity of 177,500, is the largest) have programmed much more than the music stages on which they built their reputations.
These days any festival worth its salt, and its hefty ticket price, offers a huge range of activities – theatre, literature tents, children’s activities and comedy arenas – to its visitors, in addition to the big-name acts.
Sanders approached the Glastonbury organisers with a proposal to bring something Dirt-related to the festival. “We went to the team who organise Glastonbury’s Shangri-La field as we liked the futuristic, dystopic city narrative approach it had created for this area,” she says. “The team was up for it, but it had no science background.
That’s when we linked up with Guerrilla Science, an organisation that the Wellcome has funded before, to create entertainment that would be firmly based in science.”
Guerrilla Science, a science education and performance organisation, had visited numerous festivals in the past doing small-scale talks on topics such as quantum physics, rocket science and chemistry, and delivering what founding member Zoe Cormier calls “science by surprise”.
“A lot of people perceive science as boring and this is usually because it’s not taught well,” says Cormier. “We try to make science inspiring and unconventional.”
In this spirit, Guerrilla Science created an extraordinary scenario for this year’s Glastonbury, even by the hallucinatory standards of music festivals. A storyline of a mass virus outbreak was formed and stories fed to the Glastonbury website: “2011 sees the population preparing to flee,” ran one blog headline.
In the Shangri-La area, Guerrilla Science built a two-storey decontamination unit manned by real microbiologists wearing hazard suits loaned by the science research centre at Porton Down in Salisbury, and three psychiatrists from north London. The construction was coated with a light-sensitive paint that showed up under UV lighting.
“Visitors were put through either physical or moral decontamination procedures,” explains Cormier.
Swabs were taken from visitors’ necks, cultures grown in Petrie dishes and in area called the Shame Drain, festival goers urged to confide their dirty secrets to a black box recorder. “These secrets were then broadcast – via a voice modulator – all over the festival,” Cormier says. The decontaminated were then invigorated with a dose of vodka.
Reaching new audiences
Festivals are a good way to get hold of the people that museums might not ordinarily reach. For organisations such as Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales (NMW), this kind of outreach has become essential.
NMW is attending four Welsh festivals this season: the Hay Festival (26 May-5 June), the Urdd Eisteddfod (30 May-4 June), the Royal Welsh Show (18-21 July) and the National Eisteddfod (30 July-6 August). The organisation sees this kind of participation as a means of raising its profile.
“We’ve found that it’s useful to have a presence at these shows,” says Robin Gwyn, the director of communications at NMW. “They provide a good advocacy opportunity to meet other people – locals who might not ordinarily come to museums, tourists, and to make introductions.”
The varied nature of these Welsh festivals allows the seven museums within NMW to concentrate on different aspects of their work. At the agricultural show, NMW will focus on scientific research.
And at Hay, where it shared a stand with Hanes Cymru – History Wales; Cadw, the Welsh government’s historic environment division; the Historic Houses Association; and the academic group History Research Wales, NMW took the opportunity to promote the Welsh National Museum of Art, opening this month, and to launch Discovered in Time, a book by its acting keeper of archaeology and numismatics Mark Redknap.
It’s also a strategic move, Gwyn says. “The national media come down to Hay in their droves. That means we have them on our doorstep and it’s a good opportunity to talk about what Wales has to offer culturally.”
As festivals have shed their perceived image of weekend-long bacchanals and become more family-friendly, so space has opened up for activities appealing to a wider range of people.
Latitude, held each July in the grounds of Henham Hall in Suffolk, has championed the multiarts approach ever since its inception in 2006 – the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and Sadler’s Wells have all appeared on its various stages.
At this year’s Latitude, Tate Britain, in collaboration with the Shunt performance collective, will present a three-hour event that has been inspired by the gallery’s current Watercolour exhibition.
Tate also appeared at the Big Chill in 2010: “We recognised that the Big Chill and Latitude were essentially attracting the same type of people – articulate, engaged people interested in how culture shapes society – as those who visit art galleries,” says Melvin Benn, manageing director of Festival Republic, which runs festivals and events throughout the UK and Europe, including Latitude and the Big Chill.
Latitude has gone one further in its commissioning process by developing its own £10,000 art prize, where artists create new work that is sited in a woodland area of the festival. Latitude Contemporary Art (LCA) was launched last year by Benn as a way of developing a professional strand of contemporary art within the festival.
“I wanted art from recognised emerging artists to be given the same platform as young musicians in popular culture,” says Benn.
The inaugural prize was taken by Moth Theatre, an entertainment “for moths, by moths” says winner Graeme Miller, a London-based artist with a track record of making work in unusual places.
This year’s five LCA-commissioned artists are Alice Anderson, who recently tied the exterior of London’s Freud Museum in ropes of hair, Delaine Le Bas, Graham Dolphin, Andy Harper and Maslen & Mehra.
Learning new skills
Jonathan Wallis, the assistant head of museums at Derby Museums and Art Gallery, believes that developing the skills to work in new environments – festivals included – is key to museum survival. At the end of this month, staff from Derby will travel to the Royal Festival Hall, London, to join in the Vintage festival (29-31 July).
“We’re partnering Charity Shop DJ, a local outfit that works with community organisations to break down barriers and we will dress the venue with objects from our collection,” Wallis says.
“In the past, Derby has brought hundreds of vintage radios out as decoration and this year it is going to make wallpaper festooned with the image of Derby artist Joseph Wright – and invite various celebrities to be interviewed on our stage.”
It’s all good clean fun, but what does Derby get out of participating in a London event? Several things, says Wallis. “Firstly, we are revisiting our collections by doing this, and secondly, we are telling people about Derby.” He points out that the museum will be bringing a local theatre group with them to the South Bank as well as other Derby-based artists.
There is, however, a serious point to all this. “Museums face uncertain years to come; we all know that we have to diversify our income streams,” Wallis says. “We need to practise our creative skills and encourage others to do so. It could be important for our future.”
Louise Gray is a freelance arts journalist
“Glastonbury is renowned for its filth, its dirt, its mud and awful loos – we had to go,” says Sanders, the programmer of the Wellcome Trust’s Dirt season, which includes an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London as well as a wide range of events and activities elsewhere.
The Wellcome Collection is one of many museums and galleries that sees the UK’s summer music and arts festivals as ripe with opportunities to reach new audiences.
For some years, the organisers of the main festivals (of which Glastonbury, with a site capacity of 177,500, is the largest) have programmed much more than the music stages on which they built their reputations.
These days any festival worth its salt, and its hefty ticket price, offers a huge range of activities – theatre, literature tents, children’s activities and comedy arenas – to its visitors, in addition to the big-name acts.
Sanders approached the Glastonbury organisers with a proposal to bring something Dirt-related to the festival. “We went to the team who organise Glastonbury’s Shangri-La field as we liked the futuristic, dystopic city narrative approach it had created for this area,” she says. “The team was up for it, but it had no science background.
That’s when we linked up with Guerrilla Science, an organisation that the Wellcome has funded before, to create entertainment that would be firmly based in science.”
Guerrilla Science, a science education and performance organisation, had visited numerous festivals in the past doing small-scale talks on topics such as quantum physics, rocket science and chemistry, and delivering what founding member Zoe Cormier calls “science by surprise”.
“A lot of people perceive science as boring and this is usually because it’s not taught well,” says Cormier. “We try to make science inspiring and unconventional.”
In this spirit, Guerrilla Science created an extraordinary scenario for this year’s Glastonbury, even by the hallucinatory standards of music festivals. A storyline of a mass virus outbreak was formed and stories fed to the Glastonbury website: “2011 sees the population preparing to flee,” ran one blog headline.
In the Shangri-La area, Guerrilla Science built a two-storey decontamination unit manned by real microbiologists wearing hazard suits loaned by the science research centre at Porton Down in Salisbury, and three psychiatrists from north London. The construction was coated with a light-sensitive paint that showed up under UV lighting.
“Visitors were put through either physical or moral decontamination procedures,” explains Cormier.
Swabs were taken from visitors’ necks, cultures grown in Petrie dishes and in area called the Shame Drain, festival goers urged to confide their dirty secrets to a black box recorder. “These secrets were then broadcast – via a voice modulator – all over the festival,” Cormier says. The decontaminated were then invigorated with a dose of vodka.
Reaching new audiences
Festivals are a good way to get hold of the people that museums might not ordinarily reach. For organisations such as Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales (NMW), this kind of outreach has become essential.
NMW is attending four Welsh festivals this season: the Hay Festival (26 May-5 June), the Urdd Eisteddfod (30 May-4 June), the Royal Welsh Show (18-21 July) and the National Eisteddfod (30 July-6 August). The organisation sees this kind of participation as a means of raising its profile.
“We’ve found that it’s useful to have a presence at these shows,” says Robin Gwyn, the director of communications at NMW. “They provide a good advocacy opportunity to meet other people – locals who might not ordinarily come to museums, tourists, and to make introductions.”
The varied nature of these Welsh festivals allows the seven museums within NMW to concentrate on different aspects of their work. At the agricultural show, NMW will focus on scientific research.
And at Hay, where it shared a stand with Hanes Cymru – History Wales; Cadw, the Welsh government’s historic environment division; the Historic Houses Association; and the academic group History Research Wales, NMW took the opportunity to promote the Welsh National Museum of Art, opening this month, and to launch Discovered in Time, a book by its acting keeper of archaeology and numismatics Mark Redknap.
It’s also a strategic move, Gwyn says. “The national media come down to Hay in their droves. That means we have them on our doorstep and it’s a good opportunity to talk about what Wales has to offer culturally.”
As festivals have shed their perceived image of weekend-long bacchanals and become more family-friendly, so space has opened up for activities appealing to a wider range of people.
Latitude, held each July in the grounds of Henham Hall in Suffolk, has championed the multiarts approach ever since its inception in 2006 – the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and Sadler’s Wells have all appeared on its various stages.
At this year’s Latitude, Tate Britain, in collaboration with the Shunt performance collective, will present a three-hour event that has been inspired by the gallery’s current Watercolour exhibition.
Tate also appeared at the Big Chill in 2010: “We recognised that the Big Chill and Latitude were essentially attracting the same type of people – articulate, engaged people interested in how culture shapes society – as those who visit art galleries,” says Melvin Benn, manageing director of Festival Republic, which runs festivals and events throughout the UK and Europe, including Latitude and the Big Chill.
Latitude has gone one further in its commissioning process by developing its own £10,000 art prize, where artists create new work that is sited in a woodland area of the festival. Latitude Contemporary Art (LCA) was launched last year by Benn as a way of developing a professional strand of contemporary art within the festival.
“I wanted art from recognised emerging artists to be given the same platform as young musicians in popular culture,” says Benn.
The inaugural prize was taken by Moth Theatre, an entertainment “for moths, by moths” says winner Graeme Miller, a London-based artist with a track record of making work in unusual places.
This year’s five LCA-commissioned artists are Alice Anderson, who recently tied the exterior of London’s Freud Museum in ropes of hair, Delaine Le Bas, Graham Dolphin, Andy Harper and Maslen & Mehra.
Learning new skills
Jonathan Wallis, the assistant head of museums at Derby Museums and Art Gallery, believes that developing the skills to work in new environments – festivals included – is key to museum survival. At the end of this month, staff from Derby will travel to the Royal Festival Hall, London, to join in the Vintage festival (29-31 July).
“We’re partnering Charity Shop DJ, a local outfit that works with community organisations to break down barriers and we will dress the venue with objects from our collection,” Wallis says.
“In the past, Derby has brought hundreds of vintage radios out as decoration and this year it is going to make wallpaper festooned with the image of Derby artist Joseph Wright – and invite various celebrities to be interviewed on our stage.”
It’s all good clean fun, but what does Derby get out of participating in a London event? Several things, says Wallis. “Firstly, we are revisiting our collections by doing this, and secondly, we are telling people about Derby.” He points out that the museum will be bringing a local theatre group with them to the South Bank as well as other Derby-based artists.
There is, however, a serious point to all this. “Museums face uncertain years to come; we all know that we have to diversify our income streams,” Wallis says. “We need to practise our creative skills and encourage others to do so. It could be important for our future.”
Louise Gray is a freelance arts journalist