Bryony Windsor is the head of exhibitions at the National Centre for Craft & Design (NCCD), which is in a converted seed warehouse in Sleaford, Lincolnshire. Its current show, The World is Your Dressing Up Box, runs until 8 October.
What inspired the dressing-up box show?
I thought it would be a good chance for everyone to have fun, put on different clothes and express their opinions on what fashion should be about. There are no right or wrong outfits; dressing up unites everyone. The gallery is basically a hall of mirrors but the lighting is more sympathetic than changing rooms in shops. I, for one, don’t want to walk in there and be confronted with myself every day.
So what do you fancy slipping on?
Impractical and ludicrous shoes. There’s one pair with unicorns carved into the heels and another that balances you on snow globes.
Audience participation is important, isn’t it?
We want people to have a go, rather than just coming to look. Our recent 3D printing show, for example, was designed with the visually impaired in mind, so everyone was encouraged to listen to the printing machine and feel it vibrating. Children designed sweets on their mobile devices and took them home as chocolate and gelatin. The artist Anton Alvarez created a huge extruder that pressed out ceramic clay for the Alphabet Aerobics. The show opened in an empty gallery with 30 vacant plinths. Helped by visitors, the gallery assistants made three ceramic pieces a day, and it wasn’t until the last day that the exhibition was complete with all the plinths filled.
Do the staff make their own clothes and crockery?
A lot of our part-timers run their own businesses and are successful craft practitioners. Then there are people like me on the exhibitions side who certainly don’t go home and whittle spoons. We’d be good in an emergency though; our technical team could build a temporary structure, others could weave blankets.
In what other ways do you make craft work?
Every exhibition shines a light on a particular field and its makers, many of whom find it difficult to earn a good living. We work collaboratively with them and commission new work that we send around the country. Our show, Tapestry Here and Now, for example, is at the Holburne Museum in Bath, where it replaced a Bruegel exhibition. Craft thrives on bold and sympathetic programming like that.
What inspired the dressing-up box show?
I thought it would be a good chance for everyone to have fun, put on different clothes and express their opinions on what fashion should be about. There are no right or wrong outfits; dressing up unites everyone. The gallery is basically a hall of mirrors but the lighting is more sympathetic than changing rooms in shops. I, for one, don’t want to walk in there and be confronted with myself every day.
So what do you fancy slipping on?
Impractical and ludicrous shoes. There’s one pair with unicorns carved into the heels and another that balances you on snow globes.
Audience participation is important, isn’t it?
We want people to have a go, rather than just coming to look. Our recent 3D printing show, for example, was designed with the visually impaired in mind, so everyone was encouraged to listen to the printing machine and feel it vibrating. Children designed sweets on their mobile devices and took them home as chocolate and gelatin. The artist Anton Alvarez created a huge extruder that pressed out ceramic clay for the Alphabet Aerobics. The show opened in an empty gallery with 30 vacant plinths. Helped by visitors, the gallery assistants made three ceramic pieces a day, and it wasn’t until the last day that the exhibition was complete with all the plinths filled.
Do the staff make their own clothes and crockery?
A lot of our part-timers run their own businesses and are successful craft practitioners. Then there are people like me on the exhibitions side who certainly don’t go home and whittle spoons. We’d be good in an emergency though; our technical team could build a temporary structure, others could weave blankets.
In what other ways do you make craft work?
Every exhibition shines a light on a particular field and its makers, many of whom find it difficult to earn a good living. We work collaboratively with them and commission new work that we send around the country. Our show, Tapestry Here and Now, for example, is at the Holburne Museum in Bath, where it replaced a Bruegel exhibition. Craft thrives on bold and sympathetic programming like that.