The process
'Breaking into the Museum' engages young people in a participatory exercise around heritage and interpretation, bringing youth voices from outside the cultural/social mainstream to the museum's views.
The workshop took place inside the Museum of London, in the e-Learning Studio, which is part of the Clore learning Centre.
The objective of the workshop was the creation and production of 14 bold, exciting and varied video-works – opening up the subject of interpretation and curating;
To this end, the workshop brief was to:
- infuse the workshops with the challenge of being (artistically) imaginative;
- Encourage collective work, while ensuring that each workshop participant produces a one to three minute video work of her/his own;
- Unleash voices of urban youth to engage with their city (history/heritage); and with the activity of curating/interpreting that heritage -- in the new Europe of the 21st century.
To prepare the young people, the project organised two preliminary visits to the Museum of London's Galleries of Modern London.
Guided by museum personnel and the workshop team, their first activity was to familiarise themselves with the galleries, and eventually choose a particular object or theme, on which their film would focus.
