Museums Showoff

We're back for 2016! Come along for an evening of museum-cabaret fun as London's top museum talent divulges behind-the-scenes stories, exciting projects and intriguing insights.

We’ve lined up the creme de la creme of museum talent to reveal behind-the-scenes stories, intriguing insights and amazing projects. And we’ve got the first of our new compères!

Showing off their museum-y amazingness will be:

Naomi Paxton – your MC for the night, Naomi has an eclectic career so far – from acting in the West End to shadow puppetry in rural Romania via a bit of light juggling. She also regularly performs at comedy, magic and cabaret nights as Ada Campe. Naomi is also an academic, with interests including suffrage plays and theatre and poverty. www.naomipaxton.co.uk

Dea Birkett & Rebecca Mileham – Stand well back, writers Dea Birkett and Rebecca Mileham are about to raid their vaults of terrible museum text and reveal stinkers from all over the world. From labels that are too long and boring to panels that are basically meaningless, they ask how museums get away with it.

Sian Toogood – Do you want to fall 10 metres into a pit filled with 60,000 balls or erect a 38 tonne crane to protect Ben Stiller’s hair? Well if you do then Sian Toogood can help, but only if you want to film it and ONLY if it’s at the British Museum.

Thomas Flynn & Jonathan Beck – Everyone’s talking about 3d scanning, but isn’t just an expensive fad? Jon and Tom will talk about some cheap accessible methods for turning the physical into the virtual and will give the low down on two projects that put the scans to use – Scan the World’s crowd-sourced archive, and Museum in a Box, which gets objects out of museums and into people’s hands.

Charlotte Hopkins – From the Importance of Being Sexy to Vortex, the Greater London Council Film Censorship files at the London Metropolitan Archive are anything but dull. I’ll provide highlights from the files of these lesser known films that were banned or censored for London audiences in the 1970s. As the Director General said: “The arts are sometimes intended to be disturbing, not reassuring, and what is intended to disturb may sometimes give offence.” Be prepared to be shocked, surprised and amused.

Jenny Blay – Help! I’ve fallen in love with my project plan template. I work at a Museum Learning School in Slough and it is my secret weapon in a world of PPPs, EBIs, HAs and Progress 8.

Megan Gooch – My name is Megan and I’m addicted to coins! But why coins? What is it about small change that holds such allure? What could possibly be so good about coins that I have devoted a sizable portion of my life so far to them? Come along, and I will induct you into the mysterious and amazing world of numismatics where the love of money is not the root of all evil.

Steve Rawlings – A talk on how one mobile game was written before being broken up into ten fully functioning museum apps. I’ll tell you how game technology was employed for the museum experience, what design decision were made, and how it is being developed further.