Museum of London

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Written by Kate
purpleSTARS Logo with Museum of London logo surrounded by five smaller stars

The Museum of London commissioned purpleSTARS to develop London is the Place for me, a sensory display of oral histories for their Talking Point Gallery.

20 people in a group photo outsitde the museum of London
purpleSTARS outside the Museum of London

Click here to for a 360 tour of London is the Place for Me.

Listen to purpleSTARS and Bubble Club members Rufaro and Sam discussing London is the Place for Me

Below images from purpleSTARS celebration event at the Museum of London. Ros and Ajay gave tours of the London is the Place for Me display. Sam worked with guests to create hats and bags inspired by Neil Kenlock’s photo of girls with protest bags. Rufaro hosted the event, Lee showed his video Ghost City, Paul showed his video about Black Lives Matter, Sam explained how this transformed into Equality Bay. Ajay introduce Travel and Ros showed her popcorn bucket. Vandana talked about the Museum of London Partnership with purpleSTARS.

Screen shot of Museum of London Online Archive showing a Black and White image of4 black girls with bags they had made using Black Panther Imagery. The photo was taken by Neil Kenlock
Neil Kenlock’s photo on the Museum of Londons Archive
Massive Screen at the Museum of London that says purpleSTARS Event
people sitting around tables at celebration event at Museum of London
Women sitting at a table drawing on cloth bag
Long table with artmaterials including plan cloth bags and paper hats
Three black men looking stylish at Museum of London
Lee and Rufaro standing on stage between two screens
Ajay on stage between two screens displaying his Travel artwork
Ajay on stage between two screens displaying images abut Being a Londoner
Audience at MoL for prupleSTARS celebration event
purpleSTARS display London Is The Place for Me celebration event

London is the Place for me, focuses on 4 themes that emerged from listening to the voices and stories of past Londoners: Equality, Travel, Style and Sensory Cinema.

Rufaro and Lee introduce the theme of STYLE
4 women wearing hats in a frame in the Museum of London
Style Bay Do you like wearing hats?
Attire a poem by Rufaro Asuquo Roots, Rhymes and generations are all the same. Various colours of suits were a great way to change from blue to black and white. All we see today is the culture bringing out all of its might. The experience of reminiscing about how the 60’s impacted on a lot of smart interesting things about the preparations for what’s going on in the London era. Sometimes it feels good be suited up and taking changes one step at a time, we include the styles of how we move, how we walk, how we talk and we gain access to our voices within what we wear and how we respect our oral histories. Slick, Retro, Sleek and Silk clothing to how far it’s reached from previous times, lines to now we have one and that is Attire.
Attire a Poem by Rufaro Asuquo
4 people trying on hats
Sensory Cinema Bay screen

The exhibition London is the Place for me opened on September 3rd 2021 until January 2022.

Group shot of purple STARS with banners protesting for equality.
Bus stop sign altered to show image of an online meeting.
Frame with man in wheelchair trying on a purple bowler hat infant of a black and white image of Carnaby St London
Three people wearing earphones looking at a screen showing Carnaby Street.
Screen grab of the Museum of London's webpage. Image of group holding cardboard protest banners for Equality outside the museum of London

purpleSTARS research and development for their exhibition London is the Place for Me for the Museum of London (MoL).

Screen shot from a Zoom meeting showing 12 rectangle boxes each with a participant or participants in the meeting.

purpleSTARS spent lockdown2020-21 listening and responding to the oral history archive of the Museum of London,(MOL) volunteering as part of Listening to London. The oral history collection has some 5,000 hours of recorded interviews with a wide variety of people.

Over a series of online meetings purpleSTARS have selected and listened to recordings that interest them from the archive, we called it ‘Goggle Boxing’ and used the RIX Wiki to collect our responses, making connections between past and present Londoners.

R&D Goggle Boxing for the Sensory Cinema Bay
R&D Goggle Boxing for the Equality Bay
R&D Goggle Boxing for the Style Bay
R&D Goggle Boxing for the Travel Bay

Wiki master Ajay Choksi documented each meeting on his research wiki.

six people in an online meeting.
Click on this image to link to Ajay Choksi’s WIKI WEBPAGE

As part of our research we have learnt about and practiced oral history interview techniques with MOL Curator Hannah Davies and interviewed experts from the Museum of London, Cathy Ross, ex director of MOL and digital curator Fontieni Aravani.

six people in zoom meeting and title Oral History Interview Practice
Slide showing Oral History Interview Techniques. Open and Closed Questions
Image of interview with Cathy Ross and speech bubbles with questions
Eight people in a Teams Meeting

The Talking Point Gallery at the Museum of London is a space to create, test and learn from content ideas which will feed into the development of the new Museum of London when it moves from the Barbican to the site at Smithfield Market in 2025. The Talking Point Gallery encourages Museum visitors to test and respond to content, and museum staff to push their boundaries in terms of the way content is displayed and interpreted.

Click on this image to visit our development RIX WIKI. We recorded ourselves listening and talking about the oral histories from the archive during weekly online meetings during lockdown 2020 and 2021. We also used the MoL online archive to discover and research items from the collection as we developed our ideas for the exhibition.

purpleSTARS easy to use webpage called a WIKI London's the place for me WIKI. A central circle with four smaller circles radiating from it saying Equality, Style, Travel and Sensory Cinema. If you click on the image you link to the WIKI

2 Comments

  1. Pingback: Research Project Employing the Sense of Smell – purpleSTARS
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