Exhibitions

Ok, I would say I’m quite reliant on deciding if my time with a department is going to be good or not, by the first impression I get by meeting the team.
So I can’t tell you what a delight it was meeting the exhibitions team over in the Brighton Museum. I was greeted with lots of lovely cakes and biscuits and was promised more to come, oh yeah and the work plan set for me was pretty good too.
Firstly I got to help bring down the exhibition over in Hove called Touching Art, Touching You, Which is the last tour exhibiting in Hove Museum I believe.
That was good fun. Later I help pack up the From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House exhibition which was interesting because it was so different to the one I did in Hove.
An example of this is the no touching rule. The art work in Sickert to Gertler gallery in Brighton you had to use gloves for whenever you would move a piece of art or had to give it a condition check. But in hove because Touching Art, Touching You exhibition was all about touching and feeling the art, there were no need for gloves.
Now this is when things started to get interesting. I’ve seen how bring down an exhibition, now I would get to see one put up.

Once all three of the temporary galleries over in Brighton Museum were emptied of Sickert to Gertler , along came the new exhibition Strange and Familia part of the bpb (Brighton Photo Biennial).

Basically this exhibition is about how 3 photographers (one who is from the USA and another from Japan) see Brighton. The American photographer collaborated with his 8 year old daughter that gives yet another interesting twist and angle. HP lent a special printer to print out all the photographs and in what is apparently a world’s first there are no frames on any of the pictures in the exhibition. We used magnets to hold up the pictures.

Here’s a link if you would like to know more about the exhibition http://www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/WhatsOn/Pages/BMAGphotobiennial2octto14nov10.aspx.

Zak

I worked with the Fundraising team for three months over the summer. For most of that time we were working together on producing and delivering a door drop for the Royal Pavilion and Museums Foundation. This was done to raise awareness of the charity to residents of Brighton and Hove and has proved to have been a very successful way of increasing interest.
Other jobs that I worked on include developing the social networking sites that I mentioned before, which are both growing steadily, helping Li-an with processing new members applications and sending out their membership packs. For the most recent mail out to the members of the Foundation, I compiled a competition crossword for the newsletter!

I have been working with the Learning team for a month now and I’m very busy. I’ve been working closely with the organisers of the Christmas events and am taking on part of the organisation for the project, as well as looking into developing the African Masks school session, helping at early years sessions, preparing for Diwali and White Night events and generally integrating myself into the department.

Zak and I have been working on the technical certificate part of our apprenticeship coursework. This is a really interesting piece of work and a chance for us to do a bit more research into the sector that we work in. We have to write a couple of presentations to show our knowledge of the creative and cultural sector and how creative ideas are developed and put into place. I’ve been doing research into museums of natural history around the country and how they tailor themselves to appeal to children. I’m comparing what I find to what the Booth Museum offers. It’s very interesting to see what services other museums offer as a whole and to what extent they provide to younger audiences.

Cassie

Hi all!

As some of you may or may not know, I’ve been working in Faculties with Robin and Louise over the past few months.

Sadly my time with the Faculties team has come to a end, but when one door closes another door opens. On that note I’m very happy to announce that I’m now working with the exhibitions team and very much look forward to telling you how I get on.

Now, at the request of a college I’m going to talk a bit about how a leak next to

Firstly, the leak had started in the early hours in the morning and was due to rain. By the time I arrived staff were already dealing with it.

On this day the museum was closed but if it hadn’t have been we would have roped off the area surrounding the leak so members of the public were not put at risk.

We immediately started mopping up the excess water on the floor and walls, and a bucket was put under the leak. The next issue was to find the source of the problem and fix it.

We discovered the problem was one of the tiles on the roof had broken letting the water in, which then would seep through a void, which then came through the ceiling.

But you can’t access the roof when it’s raining out side, because it is too dangerous, so there was no way to stop the leak in the short term.

The next step was get in contact with the curator in charge of the paintings next to the leak, so they could make the decision if the painting should be taken down or not.

Thankfully there was no damage done to the paintings and it had stopped raining so there was no need to take it down, but if there had been, a small lifting contraption would have been used to help lift the painting down safely.

Now that it was safe, Robin and I headed up to the roof to see what could be done to fix the tile. Unfortunately the tile was out of our reach and was also in a disgusting area where some pigeons lived. They had made quite a mess!

A cleaner had to be called in before attempting to fix the tile, due to the diseases you can pick from bird excrement, but after all that the area was cleaned and the tile repaired, and now I can safely say that’s one less tile worry about on Brighton museums roof!

Thanks for reading.
Zak

Having said that I would be writing lots more about my Functions work once I started working in the department, I didn’t appreciate quite how busy I would actually be!

Before the festival started, I spent a week with Sarah and Trish preparing for the three weeks of Fringe events in The Old Courtroom. This included imputing all the event and staff information into the booking system and creating fact sheets for the staff as well as cleaning and arranging the venue. The Old Courtroom is a lovely space, however because it is used so rarely we had to spend a lot of time anticipating the needs of the venue and the problems our customers may have. It is also the first time the venue had been used as a theatre, which created a lot of problems in itself! Tony, the venue manager who hired the venue from the Functions team, brought in stage lighting and a set of flats which completely transformed the venue from a lecture theatre into a fully formed performance space.

Throughout the festival, I took the role of house manager. I spent every day at the Courtroom, either opening up in the morning and spending the day there, or taking over in the afternoon, spending the evening there and locking up at the end of the performances. During my shifts, I was responsible for making the venue presentable before we opened to the public and at the end of the day, which involved cleaning the public spaces, setting up the equipment for the caterer, organising the signage and generally arranging the space. Once there were visitors in the building, I helped sell tickets and refreshments, organised queues and ushered the audience into the auditorium. I also had to help solve problems between customers and between the performers, which was interesting at times!

Overall, the month flew by! I could never have imagined how tiring it could be, but between working at the Courtroom and on a Fringe show at another venue, I didn’t have a moment to myself the whole month! I really enjoyed it all though and met some great people and been given some amazing opportunities.

I am now working in the Fundraising department which is hectic but really interesting. I have spent a lot of time filling envelopes in the past three weeks, but its all part of it! At the moment, I’m researching the different areas of Brighton and Hove and deciding which parts would be best to target with leaflets and promotion to gain more members for the Royal Pavilion and Museums Foundation charity. I have also set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for the RP&M Foundation and been present at meetings with companies outside of the council which I’ve never experienced before.
After I get back from Glastonbury (one of the aforementioned opportunities which Sarah and I could not turn down!), I’ll continue working with the Fundraising team until the middle of July. I will also be helping at the charity’s AGM at the end of the month which will be interesting.

I am sure I’ll be able to fill you in with more detail when I return from my holiday time and can get stuck into the projects properly.

Cassie

May is a very busy time of year in Brighton. It’s as if the city suddenly springs to life. I believe it is to do with a number of things not least of which is the change in the weather. No even though there are 2 bank holidays the main reason Brighton is buzzing in May is because the city holds one of the best festivals anywhere in the country (or anywhere but I am biased).

The festival makes use of the buildings and theatres around the city and many of Brighton’s finest artists open their houses to exhibit their work to the general public every weekend.

So invariably May was going to be a busy Month (in fact it still is as I write this). Having had a week at functions earlier this year I volunteered myself to help out on the Fringe. I got sent to help out a production at The Old Courthouse (opposite the Pavilion) and got thrown in at the deep end to help with the sound and lights. This involved cueing up music, running a power point and changing the lights to the cues on time. I found this task very stressful at first but soon (after a few mistakes) managed to get my head around it. The play was a series of monologues about characters from Brighton’s past. Bearing in mind my apprenticeship I found this fascinating as it really brought to life some of the characters that helped make Brighton what it is today.

I have also been helping contractors up in the voids behind the ceiling domes in the Pavilion. I love it up there it really gives you a different perspective on the Pavilion and how it is constructed. Just as I think I have seen everything there is to see here someone shows me something I have never seen before. For instance when I was showing a water testing company around they showed me a whole new room I didn’t know existed! It turned out to be an old blue bathroom that was put in for the Queens visit to the Pavilion (or that’s what I heard anyway).

Zak

Over the past few weeks I’ve been up to various things including
helping with contractors (showing them around and answering questions), changing filters to the roof and of course being in the Argus talking about the apprenticeship!

It was very exciting that the Argus asked for one of us to star in their apprentice of the month. I had good fun doing a phone interview and explaining to them what the apprenticeship is all about.

When the article came out, I thought it quite funny that they’d had spelt my name wrong, ha ha.

I spent much of last Wednesday morning with the contractors working on the William IV gatehouse at the north end of the Pavilion. This meant supervising them in and around the Green Centre, where the World Art curators usually work. As I spent quite a while waiting outside the Green Centre for one of the workmen to arrive, I got to properly look at the stonework of the gatehouse for the first time. A lot of it is really intricate and pretty, I had never looked up to the top properly before, even though I must have walked through it hundreds of times!

On Monday morning, Louise gathered a team to volunteers to do a Spring Clean of Preston Manor. I spent the morning carefully cleaning the old radiators and polishing the banisters of the main staircase. It was lovely seeing people from all different departments coming together to give Preston Manor some well needed TLC and being able to see the difference at the end of the morning. It was also nice talking to members of staff and volunteers that I don’t usually see.

This week is my last week in Facilities Management. I’ve really enjoyed my time here. It’s been great seeing so much of all the venues and I’ve learnt a lot.

Next week I start back with the Functions team, working on the fringe festival events taking place in The Old Courtroom. We had a meeting about it on Friday and I’m very excited about it all starting next weekend! I’ll be writing lots more about it when I start working!

Cassie