Evaluation with Hedsor

The exhibition

I've got to admit, I'm really loving cow. I think the use of ideas, colours and materials instantly attract people to it, i think it is appealing to a wide range of ages too
Also really surprised at how many comments and things were added to the interactive pieces, I was really impressed!

Twinkle X

Exhibition Launch

The exhibition opened on Tuesday 17th February and received great reviews:

'A great mix of humour, great art and craft and lots of hard work.'

'COW is a particular favourite of mine too – the way it binds the Devotion section together and the description of the thinking behind it is just inspired! I love it.'

'Watching our visitors in the gallery yesterday afternoon responding to the work added a new dimension to some well thought through ideas, delivered with flair and enthusiasm!'

Samurai Pizza Cats are Awesome

meow is not what a cow says, a cow says ,moo', can you say moo?
moo sounds like you and you most likely eat cow,
unless your in soviet Russia in which case cow eats you.
Contrary to unpopular belief cows cant actually fly however they can levitate over short distances. On average they speak seven languages and enjoy long walks along hilly paths, beeches don't agree with hooves or do they........
Humans love cows a lot, we love them so much that once we've shot them in the head with a high speed piston? and taken the scrumptious stuff from their bodies we grind up the bones and use those in lots of things like sweeties that we givve to the little ones, and plastics and INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH LUBRICANT.
Surrposedly 97% of a cow is used, i think it used to be 100% but then someone decided that they didnt like the idea of the circle of life and canabalism coming together in glorious diseased unity so they stopped feeding cows to cows.

Making the interactives

As the launch draws closer the group are working hard on their design briefs to commission the interactives. They have had several meetings with marketing, graphics design company Cafeteria, set design companies, and myself to discuss the work to be made. Last session they concentrated on making mood boards to draw out elements of the paintings that they wanted to focus on.

Before Christmas, the group voted to decide which of their designs would be taken forward to commission stage. The pieces they decided on were:

* The Birdcage, in response to Suspended by Sam Taylor-Wood and The Misses Vickers
* Road signs to be situated around the various galleries in response to the paintings
* Terraced Houses, opening up and exploring the identity of characters within the paintings
* Recipe book, inspired by Lady of Shallot and Suspended
* Frankenstein Cow, to be situated in the devotion section of the gallery

We also discussed how to make other designs more viable and interactive. From these discussions we produced ideas for how we could engage people during the launch event such as using origami and decision makers with the audience.

Houses!

Our idea was to have lots of houses that have hidden meanings, we have called it "Behind Every Door theres a Story". Everyone made their own ideas and then we voted 5 to continue construction. Ours was chosen, this was good because we felt our idea was definately good enough and it would have been a shame to not use it!

Today we are going to Pizza Express, and of course we are looking forward to that;)! But we don't have another workshop till next year ;(!

Okay bye and Merry Xmas from Ella, Annie and Shakira xxx

Any more thoughts about your web space?

Hi all, if you have any questions or comments about the web space for young people (that's YOU!) that I wrote about a few weeks ago, please can you post them on here by Friday, otherwise we won't be able to take them into account when creating it!
Cheers
Jacqueline

FrankenCow

A Frankenstein amalgam of cow products....

matt!'s idea is to have a cow but made up of loads of cow derived products which include;

• Dairy products (milk, cheese, etc)
• Beauty Products
  
• Products with flavourings
• Paint brushes
• Clothes/Accessories
  
• Fast food
• Plastics (from cow fatty acids)
• Medicines
  

I have heard that around 97% of the cow carcass is used so only 3% is actually waste....

which is a pretty cool stat to come up with in a debate with the environmentalist!!

Im matt! and i approve this blog post detailing my plans!

Our Idea...

When told we were to pick a painting that inspired us out of the collections in the Graves gallery, Joyce and I knew what our first piece was: The Misses Vickers by J.S. Sargent. For a long time this had been one of our favourite pieces in the gallery. I dont know if it's the colours that attract us, or the intrigue and beauty of the girls (probaby all three) but we knew we wanted to include this painting. The hard part was finding a modern piece that we felt linked with this. We settled on The Coop.
We linked these paintings mainly due to the idea of more than one person and the link between women in the family.

We toyed around with this idea for a while. We also saw the element of class in the paintings- The contrast of the rich sisters to the servant-esque feel of the women in The Coop.
Our ideas went though may changes and stages until we thought of this:

Our Idea
We use different styles of cutlery stood up around a plate. The cutlery represents people and the plate (somehow on legs) represents a dinner table. We came up with this idea because it shows a clear role reversal. We wondered what would happen if the Vickers Sisters were made to do the work of the women in the coop? What would happen if the women in The Coop had the liberty of the sisters? We thought that cutlery was a great idea because not only does it link with us as people due to the Sheffield link with steel, but it also links with the idea in both paintings and the way that they made us feel. We thought a congregation of cutlery so to speak linked nicely with the idea of groups and bonds between family that we saw in the paintings

I'm not sure how the whole piece overall would look or how effective it would be... Or even if you understand the point I'm trying to make! But I think it would be really interesting to see our idea develop and turn into a piece of art

Kisses,
Twink X

How to make a lovely mother?

Well~Well~Well~
Today,me and Martha and Leslie have thought of making a recipe about lovely mother!~
Um.....So we gonna make a cook book about it, and......you will see......
Haha!~ ^^"
We actually gonna write all the things on the cook book,however......
It's business secret,so I'm not going to tell you.....
But- you can still ask us about it!~ (Cause I can't really explain it.......)

The Booth

Chloe wasn't here this week. She was in London trying to get into exhibitions for free because she is naughty like that. So I had to face Kate and Caspar on my own armed only with the badly drawn diagram of our proposal. As you may know (or should as it was in my last post), our idea was to ask people to write down their thoughts, advice, worries or something that is important to them. We would then take their photo and display the statements on a back wall and the photos hung from the ceiling. Below this would be a video of people telling the camera their worries and a sheet of paper for the general viewers to write advice and encouragement to these strangers.

However, times change, and after a very interesting and thought provoking discussion with Kate and Caspar it looks like our design may be altered slightly. Obviously I need to run these ideas past Chloe but here is a rough outline:-

We would keep the photos and the statements buit instead of having them hanging we would have the whole instalment in a sort of booth. This would be quite small, just taller and wider than your average doorway (but 3D). All over the walls would be collaged photos and pieces of paper which you can spend as long as you want examining and thinking about. Also on the walls would be several nails sticking out at different levels. There would be a small box of tags (like the old ones you get on suitcases) which the general public could write advice, thougfhts and responces to the artwork. They could then hang them on the nails provided.

Right I have to go now as everyone is tydying and leaving around me. I hope at least some of that made sense and I'll let you know how it's all going throughout the project!

Susie x.

Houses with transparent roofs and glow in the dark stuff inside and turn the lights off:)

We are making houses in response to the Sam Taylor-Wood and the Lady Denham portrait. We had this idea because these two people have stories to tell, Sam Taylor Wood is trying to express hers while Lady Denham hides her story. The houses and the people represent stories that people have to tell. We were thinking of having them all exactly the same on the outside but then you open them up like a dolls' house and you can see what's inside and their stories they have to tell, that no-one would normally know. This would be a good way of being able to interact with the work - there's so many pieces of artwork that you can't touch and have to stay behind a line and you can't interact with it at all.

I also want a transparent roof! So you can see inside easily.

Too much dirt

For our interpretive work we have looked at The Painting of Lady Denham and the sculpture 'Kiss' by Marc Quinn. We explored the idea that beauty is sometimes found within and that you shouldn't take things at face value. We thought about stereotypes, expectations and preconceptions and how these things affect our ability to make judgements. The idea for our interpretive work was to buy an old battered car from a scrap yard and spray paint the engine with gold paint and upholster the seats inside with gold silk. The problem with this is that the curators probably won't be very happy with us putting a dirty, germ-ridden car alongside lots of valuable artworks. We therefore need to think of another everyday object which has a clear outside and inside and one which would be possible to customise with gold paint and fabric. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

I know why the caged bird sings

The idea behind our project was to display the emotions the viewer gains when they first veiw the two peices. We felt the two peices where simular as they both had elements with represented captivity and restriction. From this we looked at diffrent ways to display captivity, we looked at clothing, buildings,cages and other restriciting things. our final idear is to produce a cage suspended in the gallary space with birds comeing out of the door atteched by wire. This will resemble the captivity shown in the both peices the wire on the birds will represent there fredom wich has been restrained.

What would you want from a social networking, media, blogging site?

I know you've all done some consultation about the museums in Yorkshire's part in the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, called 'Voyages', so this is a little bit different. I want to ask you all what you'd like from a Web 2.0 platform which is going to be designed specifically for young people (i.e. you and lots of other young people across the region). It will be called 'My2012' (in the same vein as MyLearning, if you've heard me talk about that website). The website will show, on an interactive map, all the youth based projects that are happening in museums across the region, including yours! Oh, and it will be FREE for you to use (yay!).

So what I'd like you to tell me about is: How would you use a website like this? What would you post on it? What parts would you use? What ideas do you have about what could be on there? Here are just a few ideas -

You could post videos, audio, images and slideshows. You could voice your opinions and aspirations and could even start a campaign about something that you're passionate about. You could have discussions about museums and museum collections and help us reinterpret our collections from your point of view. You could contribute to a blog, maybe even a wiki. Let your imagination run wild, you never know, we might make it happen!

It would be great if you could post your ideas and thoughts about my suggestions and make any of your own. You can post onto this blog or you can email me at jacqueline.oneil@museums-sheffield.org.uk if you want your ideas to be anonymous.

Thanks very much :)
Jacqueline

Feasibility study

Right guys! Timescales are creeping up on us and we have to get designers in to make up your ideas before Christmas. With this in mind it's of vital importance that you attend the next session if you want your idea to be put forward to the group for development. I've seen a lot of interesting ideas and hard work over the last few weeks so it would be great to have finished products to show for it. Looking forward to seeing you all 4.30 prompt :)

hey!
This is such a great oppurtunity and its so fun. I have made loads of new friends and we do so mant fun things. Going to London was sooooooooooooo fun, I hope we can do something like that again. Its great going to meet your friends after school and doing something you really enjoy. There is also another plus because it counts for my skill and service part for my Duke of Edinborough. Can't wait till next week when we will continue doing our projects.
Bye Annie x

Secrets, worries and advice.

Me and Chloe are doing a project about worries and advice. We went round photographing people in town asking them to write down either a piece of advice or something that is important to them. We got responses such as "Be considerate", "Dont' eat yellow snow", and names of loved ones. This, along with PostSecret and Gillian Wearing has inspired us to create an interactive installation. It will consist of photos hanging of people holding their advice / important stuff, a collage of those pieces of paper, a screen showing people telling their worries in life and a massive role of paper on which the general public can write down advice for the people shown on the video.

If people have any suggestions or ideas please feel free to comment back with them.

Susie & Chloe

x.

:)

I think its fun and you can learn alot from it. Today we are taking paintngs and creating new things inspired by them. It gives me an excuse to to go to town on a monday evening which isgreat. And you get to art while you're here! I heard about it after I was involved in a g+t project and I am glad I joined. It also is part of my Duke of Edinburgh so I don't have to fundraise and stuff.

Its cool.

funness

youth Forum is Fun as you can do various fun things; like drawing. The current Visual Dialogue's Project about identity is fun. So far, we have done fun things such as going to London to the fun Tate modern and Tate Britian in one day. We have also had some fun ideas about our potential piece. I think, in the future, the project will be even more funas we create out final piece. Fun!