museumaker

Six East Midlands museums have already benefited from the £310,000 museumaker programme which links museums and designer makers by bringing contemporary design into museums to complement or take inspiration from existing exhibitions.

The latest museumaker project to be launched is Nottingham Castle's Sankofa - Globe of Freedom. The project brought together designer maker Katherine Morling with a group of Nottingham's young people. They took inspiration from the bicentenary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and how black people are depicted in art and culture across the ages. 

Globe of Freedom depicts a globe with two manacled fists coming out of its sides. It uses Wedgwood’s famous black jasper and was fired at the company's factory in Staffordshire and has been permanently acquisitioned by Nottingham Castle.

‘Long Crawlies and Little Crawlies’ was unveiled in 2007 at Derby Museum and Art Gallery. This quirky, yet functional seating, designed by Carl Clerkin, has taken its inspiration from the stories told by the paintings in the Joseph Wright of Derby Gallery, where the seating is situated.  After less than a fortnight in situ, the installation is already inspiring people to look differently at the paintings, more often seeing the stories, rather than an art history interpretation.

The designer maker’s perspective has also helped museum staff and volunteers to view their collection in a different way.

Northampton Museum and Art Gallery now has a contemporary, yet comfortable, café and bar area to attract people into the museum, and inspire them to stay.  The designs are inspired by items from the museum's collections and the new cafe is light, airy and very comfortable.

This experience has led to the museum working with other designer makers to commission five new innovative handling resource boxes for school and community groups.  These 'vessels' interpret the Museum’s human history collection and tell their own story. See the new designs on the Hands on History page of the Renaissance East Midlands website.

The empty niche at Boston Guildhall has been filled by a new ‘Madonna’ designed by Claire Curneen, figurative ceramicist.  In the Madonna’s hands is a model of the Boston stump, symbolising the relationship between the church and the Guildhall, which saw annual processions between the two in medieval times.  The procession will be reinstated in summer 2007.

The temporary installation at 78 Derngate (Charles Rennie Mackintosh house) in Northampton has been so successful that it’s now become permanent.  The sculpture, Seedlings, by Rebecca Newnham, takes inspiration from the decoration inside the house and, like the house's designer, Mackintosh, interprets the natural world, in this case as a mirrored mosaic of growing seed pods.  The sculpture is in the garden and, as well as attracting new visitors, has provided 78 Derngate with retail ideas, including plans to sell some bespoke items from additional designer makers.  The programme has also inspired the museum to provide space for designer makers to exhibit their work.

It's a case of 'From Newark to New York' for the Millgate Museum in Newark.  The temporary installation of vessels designed by  Edmund de Waal, is en route to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Edmund worked with eight 15–19 year-olds to create vessels for both a temporary and a permanent exhibition (still on display at the museum) both inspired by the museum’s collection.  The young people involved had not visited any museums previously, yet the project inspired them to the extent that many were at the museum the morning before school exams.  The museum was delighted by the impact of the project, which also re-energised the curators because the young people offeredn a new perspective on existing exhibitions.  The museum is now considering a 'young curators’ group' which will serve to offer them advice in the future. 

Temporary exhibitions were launched during May 2006 as part of the annual Museums and Galleries Month.  At Charnwood Museum, Loughborough, Laura Ellen Bacon designed, ‘Progressing Forms’ and ‘Pouring Forms’ from local dogwood and hazel, inspired by the museum’s displays of indigenous coppicing and basket weaving.  The forms appeared inside the msueum and cascading out of windows.  Free creative sessions in the neighbouring Queens Park also saw local people of all ages creating their own willow woven sculptures.

Rebecca Newnham produced two installations for New Walk Museum, Leicester.  ‘Lotus’ was inspired by the lotus plants found in the collections from Ancient Egypt, India and Japan, and resulted in a blue lapis sculpture which appears poised to open.

museumaker brings together three agencies - Arts Council England, East Midlands; Museums, Libraries, and Archives East Midlands and Renaissance East Midlands to work collaboratively for the first time with additional funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. museumaker’s key aims are to:

• increase visitor numbers for museums,
• add new dimensions to existing collections,
• increase revenue streams for museum shops,
• expand opportunities for designer makers to place and sell their work. 

museumaker has also conducted a retail survey, working with the participating museums to assess their retail potential and provide advice on how to improve income generation through their on site and online shops.

A report from the consultation is now available to download below. For more information about this and other income generation ideas for museums visit the income generation page on the Renaissance East Midlands website.

museumaker retail report executive summary (519 kb)