Category Archives: General

A Pirate Story Aarrrr!

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We are all getting in the Pirate mood here at Thinktank as we look forward to our summer extraveganza, ‘The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists!: The Exhibition’. The exhibition is packed full of the Aardman Animation sets used in the film (of the same name) as well as interactives, dressing up and even a model Dodo from Oxford University Museum of Natural History. To find out what a Dodo has to do with a Pirate crew you’ll have to watch the film!

As part of our Piratey celebrations we will be running Pirate themed storytelling all summer. To help us come up with the best story possible we invited a group of our Season Ticket holding families to come and write it with us. You may remember we did a similar project with our We Made It Story and it was so much fun we decided to do it again, though without creating a book this time!

Once again we worked with the brilliant storyteller, Anna, who led the group on an adventure to create the characters and plot line for our story.  The kids (and adults!) took part in a whole range of arts and crafts, singing, acting and game playing to get the creative juices flowing. Check out some of their creations below!

The families were wonderful to work with, and reminded us how lucky we are to be surrounded by people who want to give us their time and get involved in our work. Look out for the story once it launches at the end of the month!

Easter Volunteers Year Two!

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We’ve talked about lots of new exciting projects in recent blog posts but today I want to return to an on going ‘We Made It’ project based on providing volunteering roles for local young people.

Our first batch of volunteers joined us last Easter holidays and were so successful that we committed to providing the same opportunities every Easter! This year we again welcomed a group of 16-17 year olds, from Birmingham to join our Gallery Enabler team.These are the people that help our visitors to enjoy the museum as much as possible by running activities, providing directions and talking about the exhibitions.

The group with their certificates

    The group with their certificates

This year we had the added bonus of the We Made It gallery actually being open! The volunteers, therefore, spent a lot of time helping visitors explore this space and running activities. The volunteers also used a brand new activity space on their final day to show visitors lots of handling objects and science demonstrations. Once again we are so impressed with the time and effort these wonderful young people put in whilst at the museum. Here’s to next year!

The Festival of Ecology

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It’s a term you’ve probably come across and think you know what it means but…what exactly is ecology?! Well this year is the centenary of the British Ecological Society (BES) and they want everyone to find out through their ‘Festival of Ecology’, a programme of events taking place all over the country.

Being big fans of the natural world here at Thinktank we decided to get involved in the Festival and celebrate the ecology of our very own city, Birmingham. But instead of the museum staff putting together an exhibition we’ve handed over all control over to our newly established Young People’s Forum, Ignite!

Brainstorming in the first meeting!

Brainstorming in the first meeting!

Ignite are made up of 17, 16-20 year olds from across Birmingham, all working together to produce a Pop-Up exhibition and range of family activities that will go on display this summer. In fact, the exhibition will be traveling all over the city to some of the sites of Birmingham Museums Trust like Aston Hall and Soho House (see full list of dates). Our friends over at Blakesley Hall have been exploring the ecology of their site already and are looking forward to the exhibition visiting them.

So what is the exhibition about? Well, ecology of course, but in particular the group chose to focus on how humans have shaped the ecology of the landscape around them. The displays are split into four key zones; Canals and Ponds, Gardens and Forests, Food and Agriculture and Urban Wildlife, all features found in Birmingham.

So far, Ignite have been working hard carrying out lots of research, writting all the text for the exhibition and choosing lots of images. We were also joined by three scientists from the University of Birmingham who came to tell the group about their own research in areas relating to the exhibition.

Spot scientists who've joined the forum!

Spot scientists who’ve joined the forum!

 

Dr Ian Thornhill and Prof Rob Mackenzie talking with their groups

Dr Ian Thornhill and Prof Rob Mackenzie talking with their groups

The input of Ian, Rob and Emma has been invaluable in making sure the exhibition contains up-to-date research from local universities. In addition, it was wonderful for the group to meet local academics that they would never usually come into contact with.

The group are currently planning a range of exciting family activities as we wait for the exhibition to come back from the graphic designers. We can’t wait to see what it looks like!

So what is ecology?! Well you’ll have to come along and find out!

Celluloid Nights

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Mixologist

Sciencey themed cocktails by Mixologist Luke

A couple of weeks ago Thinktank held its very first adult evening event at the museum in partnership with the Flatpack Film Festival. Together we created an evening celebrating historic cinema and science, with some popcorn, live music and cocktails thrown in just for fun! With the use of celluloid film disappearing from our cinemas the event gave us the opportunity to highlight the importance of plastics in the history of film.

There were some amazing activities throughout the evening that encouraged people to engage with film in all sorts of different ways. From a film processing workshop to a talk on historic plastics there were activities all over the place! There were of course film screenings, from Kino Club and others, but visitors also had the chance to hand make their own piece of film with Unravel. This is a project to create the longest hand painted film in Britain but basically involves relaxing and doing some colouring!  

Visitors handmaking their own film

   Visitors hand making their own film

Hand Made Film

An extract from a horror film?

We also had a light and sound instillation, Lis Rhodes: Light Music, which was previously on show at the Tate Modern. An interesting mix of light, projection and sounds that encouraged people to interact within the instillation. It was certainly unlike anything we have had at Thinktank before (contemporary art not really being our thing!) but it was amazing to have something so different on our galleries.

Light Music

               Light Music Instillation

Finally, the night ended with music from local band ‘Heath and Efficency’ who closed out the evening along with projections of footage created on the night. Overall, it was a really successful and enjoyable event and we hope everyone who came along has a great time! Who knows, maybe we’ll do it again next year!

Health and Efficency

               Health and Efficiency

Making New Friends

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Welcome to the newly re-purposed Thinktank Blog!

Now that most of the We Made It projects are drawing to a close we have decided to give the blog a wider focus and cover as much of our work as possible. Expect to see lots about our volunteers, new partners, new projects, the work of our visitors and anything else we can fit in! As always, please get involved by commenting and sharing as much as you like.

We’ll kick off by covering a few of the events we have run recently with new partners (or to use a nicer word, friends!) to the museum. We are lucky to have so many wonderful people and organisations that want to come to Thinktank and run events for our visitors. Two such organisations are the Assay Office and the Aluminium Federation who both came in to run ‘Meet the Expert’ days over the February Half-Term holiday. Both were extremely popular events with visitors learning all about hallmarking, jewellery making, aluminium production and getting some nice aluminium wrapped chocolate coins!

Aluminium Federation

                 Aluminium Federation

Dr Alan from Alfed!

      Dr Alan from Alfed!

It is exciting for us as a museum to be able to provide our visitors with opportunities to meet professionals like these that they may not usually be able to talk to.

In the same week we also welcomed over 60 students from the University of Birmingham who ran ’Meet the Scientist’ activities all over the museum, covering everything from fluid dynamics to stick insects! Here’s some of the happy bunch that joined us from the School of Biosciences, it must be early on in the day as they are all smiling and full of energy!

Meet the Scientists

                    Meet the Scientists

We also welcomed around 40 students from the Physical Sciences of Imaging in the Biomedical Sciences (PSIBS) Doctoral Training Centre (try saying that fast!) who virtually took over the museum! Here’s some of the activities they brought along to help explain their research to our visitors.

 

Thank you to all our new friends for adding to the experience we can provide for our visitors. Look out for lots more posts in the next few weeks about other people and projects at Thinktank!

Finishing Things!

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What a hectic few weeks for the We Made It team! So much so I have rather neglected the Blog at the very point at which exciting things are happening! My sincere apologies. I hope to make up for it with a few posts rounding some of the projects off.

Firstly, the Gallery! Officially open to our visitors on Saturday 16th February 2013 (tomorrow if you are reading this today!) the We Made It Gallery is looking wonderful. As with all new galleries, we have been in a period of snagging and testing for the past week to make sure all the exhibits and interactives are functioning as they should. This is an extremely time consuming process and can even involve large scale changes right at the last minute! Sometimes it’s only when a display is insitu that we can see whether or not it fits perfectly. 99% of the time our planning pays off and everything is fine but occasionally alterations do need to be made. Hopefully everything should be perfect for tomorrow (with some crossing of figures!) but a gallery is an evolving space so will change based on our visitors needs.

Here’s an array of photos of We Made It looking its very best! If you have a chance to visit do let us know what you think.

The Finished Storybook!

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 A very quick post to say… our beautiful new storybooks are here! This project, to create a children’s storybook set in the We Made It gallery and with local children, has been many months in the making so it is wonderful to finally hold the finished product. The books will be available for visitors to borrow for free as part of our new We Made It Parent Packs, from the 16th of February 2013.  

Open Book

                                 Open Book

Story Book!

                               Story Book!

Filling the Silver Case

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Casing filling in We Made It is progressing nicely so I thought today I’d focus on one case and look at the some of the processes involved in putting the objects in. Today it’s the turn of the Silver Case, displaying items from the Assay Office.   

We have already looked at mount making in an earlier post but in the Silver Case, mounts are not needed as the objects are placed directly onto the glass shelves. Unlike the Gem Cases, the layout of this case was decided a long time ago and the text panel put in place. In the images below curator Sarah is placing the last few objects on to the shelves, with great care!

Placing In Case

Curator Sarah placing objects in the case

Re-aranging

              Sarah re-aranging an object

Each object is then focused with the individual lights that surround the case. This is a painstaking task but necessary to show the objects off to their full advantage!

Lighting

Object focusing using individual lights

Finally, the text panel on the back of the display is checked for errors. This stage is crucial as smaller bits of the text, like ‘i’ dots can get left behind on the transfer paper, as you can see in the image below!

Case Label

Spot the difference! The case label before and after proof reading

Eventually, the finished case is ready! All objects in place, well lit and with the correct information, perfect! Now on to the next one and the next one… and the next one!

Finished Case

                Finished Case

Story Book Illustrations

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With the We Made It Gallery nearly finished lots of the other projects we have been working on are also reaching completion, including my favourite one, the story book project!

In my first post about this project I explained how we had held a story writing day with a group of local families, storyteller, Anna, and illustrator, Rosie. Since then they have both been hard at work turning all the wonderful ideas that came out of that day into the finished book. Although we are only a few weeks away from the finished product I thought I’d share a few of the illustrations that are in the book, as well as some early sketches to show how they developed.

Rosie began by designing each of the characters, first in pencil and then in water colour.

Sketching the front cover

Sketching the front cover

 

You can see how the sketches develop through these drawings of the main character Jem!

An early sketch of the main character Jem

An early sketch of  Jem

 

The completed colour version

The completed colour version

She then created a rough storyboard and began arranging the characters into scenes based on the text created by Anna. Here is one of the heroes of the story, Tiger, in early sketches and the finished scene.

An early sketch of the tiger in pencil

An early sketch of the tiger in pencil

The finished illustration on the page

The finished illustration on the page

These scenes have all come together to create the finished book! It is now our task to re-create this digitally, with the text in place, to send for printing.

Watch this space for the finished product!

Gemstone Cases

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The cases of We Made It continue to be filled and today we turn our attention to the Gemstone cases of the Treasure section. Unlike other cases in the gallery, the layout of these were not decided upon in advance. For example, in this case of metal tubes the decision of where to place each object was made a long time ago so that mounts could be made and accurately placed.

Metal Tubes

              Metal Tubes

However, in the Gem cases, the layouts are mocked up with the actual objects in place so they can be moved around until the best layout is found. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, to see in which position each stone looks best, for example standing up or lying flat, which has to be done with the object itself. In addition, to see how different stones look when they are grouped together, such as here in this case of blue and green stones.

Mock up Case

                             Mock up Case

The black background are the actual mounts that the stones will sit on once in the cases, providing different heights and shelves to place the objects on.

Another important consideration is lighting. Gemologist Cally Oldershaw, who is overseeing the whole operation, explains that some stones are a completely different colour depending on how the light strikes them. Take, for example, this piece of Labradorite (named after the place in Canada not the dog!) blue tilted in one direction and grey in another.

Labradorite

One stone, two colours. This piece of Labradorite looks blue in one light, grey in another.

The difference is amazing and this is just one piece of many! The lighting on every single piece will be considered and adjusted to show off the stone to its best.

Before I left Cally showed me her favourite finds of the day, these three pieces of Azurite, in its polished and unpolished state showing the remarkable difference the process of working the stones has.

Blues and Greens Case

Azurite, polished and unpolished.

 I will bring you images of the finished cases once they are complete!