Museums Showoff

The cabaret-style night for people who love museums is back for its 30th London show.

We've lined up the creme de la creme of museum talent to intrigue, astound and amaze you.

Doors open 6.45pm
Show starts 7.30pm

Taking to the stage for this extravaganza of wit and wisdom, objects and exhibitions are:

Naomi Paxton – she acts, she does magic, she’s an expert on suffrage plays AND she’s your compere for the night! Find out more about our multi-talented MC here: http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/

Alistair Brown – Will there be any museum funding in five years time (and what is the Treasury’s PIN number?) Who are the 4% of people in the cultural sector who voted for Brexit (and where do they live?) And what happens if a museum sells off some of its old stuff (and will anyone notice?) These are some of the questions that keep Alistair Brown, Policy Officer at the Museums Association, awake at night. Together, we’ll look for answers.

Emily Wiles & Bianca Manu – We’ll talk about our experience of working with Australia based artist Busty Beatz following her residency at Wellcome Collection as part of the Sick of The Fringe Festival in Feb 2017. Busty Beatz created ‘We are the Latest Models of Our Ancestry’, a 3-day Twitter takeover of @ExploreWellcome and an installation confronting uncomfortable truths in one of Wellcome Collection’s permanent galleries. It has fuelled conversations about the museum’s colonial past, cultural blind spots of the present and the urgent need to revise curation of collections in the future.

Mahendra Mahey – A salutary tale laced with drama, humour, despair and inspiration of how the British Library managed to get a giant art piece originally exhibited at the Burning Man festival in Nevada USA to sit in the Library’s ‘Poet’s circle’ outside in the piazza for nearly 6 months. This is a story about what amazing things can happen when Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs) open their doors to their collections through digitisation.

Rosie Clarke – Who has a crush on museums? How Culture24 tried out a daily Instagram photography experiment to help shape the look and feel of the new Museum Crush website.

Melinda Haunton – Creating a new archives standard from scratch, in public, with as many people as possible? Looking back at the first years of Archive Service Accreditation, it seems like setting out to climb Everest. But we did it, we’re still standing, and I’m here to answer the questions you didn’t know you had.

Nick Oram & Chloe Petts – Improvised comedy group Do Not Adjust Your Stage talk in collaboration with the National Gallery Young Producers about their sell-out show Blank Canvas – an improvised comedy show inspired by the paintings in the gallery! The National Gallery Young Producers are a group of 18-25 year olds from diverse backgrounds dedicated to opening up the gallery to young people like them by exploring the collection in new ways.

Sam Perrin – What does a headstone tell you about a life long gone? Join Cemetery Club’s Sam Perrin for a journey through various cemeteries (or ‘people museums’ as we like to call them) to view just how revealing, quirky and witty some people’s final memorials can be. From poignant to laugh-out-loud funny, you’ll never look at a graveyard the same way!

Arti Prashar & Ellie Pridgeon – Spare Tyre is celebrating 40 years of participatory arts with an HLF funded project called ST40; Artistic Director Arti and Archivist Ellie will talk about setting off establishing the archive and recording oral histories. Spare Tyre started as a feminist theatre company. We were one of the first theatre companies to work creatively with schools on gay rights and gender equality. Our work now includes projects with adults with learning disabilities and older people. We don’t often get the chance to think about what we did yesterday, let alone 40 years ago. It’s time to take stock, take pride and preserve some memories.

Laura Southall – Job hunting for the perfect museum role is a lot like dating to find your perfect man – it feels near-impossible, it makes you want to give up and hibernate with cats and it involves a lot of talking about yourself in an array of ridiculous ways. Having survived nearly 18 months of job applications and interviews, Laura will relive the highs and lows (let’s be honest, mainly lows) of finding ‘The One’.