I was recently asked to help the Interpretation and Information teams at Tate Britain present a persuasive case for a greatly enhanced information and interpretation provision for visitors. This ‘mindmap,’ if that’s the right term for it, aims to illustrate the many ways in which a visitor might engage with an artwork. Using a Henry Moore sculpture as an iconic example worked well, repeated over 20 times in various contexts to emphasis the point.

Earlier this month I attended Future Creative’s Creativity in Practice course at Bore Place Farm near Sevenoaks. I made a lot of new er… creative friends and began to get to grips with the principles and er… creative processes that will enable me to devise and run successful er… creative projects in schools that both engage students and meet the hopes and aims of the teaching staff.

During the summer term I’ll be working with the Science Department at Brockhill Park near Hythe, a school which has, over the last few years, very successfully built its learning culture around arts and creative thinking. It’s well known for its excellence in Performing Arts, but encourages creativity right across the curriculum. I’ll be working with the teachers to develop some project ideas, possibly an exploration in science fiction encompassing topics such as of alternative energy, the environment and healthy lifestyles.

And ultimately, the hope is that this work will also lead nicely into my involvement in the government’s £25 million Find Your Talent programme, an initiative aiming to provide young people with five hours of quality cultural activity a week, which is being piloted here in Shepway (one of ten pilot areas) over the next couple of years.

Since the New Year myself, Hugh ‘DUNK‘ Williams and Chris Wilson have been working on a re-vamped version of the Portraits and Portraiture children’s activities we originally produced back in 2005. Not quite finished yet, but we’re really happy with the way it’s looking. We’ve had to find a balance between a cartoony look and the fine detail of the portraits themselves, but I think we’ve managed it, and the activities are now a more attractive proposition for kids and their teachers. It should be fully up and running in a couple of weeks.

This is old news really I suppose, but I just happened to notice it’s exactly a year since I was involved in the planning and design of The Great Tate Mod Blog, an online repository of visuals, ideas and discussions which has, in theory at least, been feeding directly into the considerations and deliberations of architects Herzog and de Meuron. They are have been designing the new building for the south side of Tate Modern, due to open, I think, in 2012. Anyway, the site has been steadily filling up with interesting blog postings and user contributions since it’s launch. The photographic mood board worked particularly well I thought, and enabled people to send in pictures by mobile phone in a very similar way to the Folkestone Triennial Photo-Map this summer… funny that! Coincidence?

The website’s visuals were designed by fivefootsix and it was shortlisted for Best of the Web: Innovative at Museums and the Web 2008 and Best Blog Award by the British Interactive Media Association.

http://modblog.tate.org.uk

I was there with my friend and colleague James Baylay, capturing the ideas from the workshops visually. These mind-maps were used as a visual accompaniment to the conference on Friday, which attracted a big attendance of museum and gallery professionals, designers and educators. It was great to be involved, especially now I’m starting to venture into the audio tours field myself. 

Anyway, here are the mind-maps. Peter Samis from SFMoMA very astutely spotted Robert Crumb and Philip Guston influences in the images which I think James should be taking all the credit for. I see myself as more akin to early Hergé (before he got good and learned how to draw things in perspective!).