The Design Festival
September 2019 shall be a vital and important month to the Victoria and Albert museum. I have been given a golden opportunity sent from heaven to be a trained tour guide in arts and design. I saw this as a opportunity to help the museum and to be on the rader as a tour guide for the museum. I shall be paired with a Team leader called Caroline I shall become well versed in knowledge in arts and design. This article shall talk about my 9 day role as a tour guide and what the art and design festival does. It shall be a special one off article. The festival which takes place every year in the museum also floods into exhibition. As well as activities taking place within the museum the festival will look at Climate change and how the museum is contributing to protecting the environment.
When we doing my second session of training as a tour guide for the festival. I was surprised to learn that the Bamboo structure in the courtyard was held together by steel wire. In my own free time I watched the famous designer use clippers to mould the bamboo structure to what he wanted. I was lucky enough to have being invited to a talk to hear the famous Professor Kungo Kuma from Tokyo University talk about the Bamboo structure and he is the wonderful chap in the photograph.
The London Design Festival is a 9 day festival that celebrates and promotes London as the design capital of the World. The Art and design festival in now in its 16 th year of running. It is one of the World's largest most important design events. The Festival programme is made up of over 300 events and exhibitions. The Victoria and Albert museum has been the hub of the Festival for eight years now. Throughout the Museum there is a range of specially commission installations and displays. It shall be my job as the tour guide to get to know the background of each object on display. This article you shall get to know the name of each of the individual art for each installation and display. There shall be a lot of various activities like talks and workshops taking place within the museum that shall be taking place within the museum.
In this article one shall be getting to know many people in the Design World. The first person that comes to my attention is Elora Hardy and IBUKU. I have looked at her IBUKU website and with my own research completed I can say that I admire her attempts at combining Nature into living accommodation. I learnt that she had been motivated way back in the 1980s when she learnt new ways of using the Bamboo as a structure for buildings. I am looking forward to talking about this IMBUKU Bamboo feature as it will be in the Blavatnik Hall and I like to think in contrast to its surroundings.
I have been one two walk around tours with the museum as part of my training as a tour guide. I feel more prepared now mentally as I take on these extra duties. I realise that there will be a lot of walking and exercise. I was with my new team leader Caroline who is a retired teacher. I discovered that we have 15 objects and 1 hour which is 4 minutes to do each object. This does not include the walking to each object. We are doing the tour twice tomorrow. What I have realised is that I only need to say the name of the artist and what the object is then move on. That is a true shame as I watched some of the installations be explained by the Curators and would have enjoyed showing off my newly founded expert knowledge.
I hear another talk in my training as a tour guide from the main Curator of the festival. It was a crash course in the design festival and learning what was happening in the bigger picture. It was an interesting lecture as I learnt about the Void installation which was happening outside London. After the 1 hour long lecture I met and spoke with other volunteers from other museums. I liked talking to the art and design volunteers who were very impressed with the VIctoria and Albert museum.
Kalos Stasis is another artist. Her art work shall be in the Sackler Centre for arts education. Her artwork is sensorial and Interactive installation. It's all about the unseen flow of the most vital organ, the heart. The piece aims to make visible our own body's enduring ability to to return to a state of balance which maintains life. I thought that the artist who designed the heart installation out did herself as you could step inside the object and become a piece of the beating heart. I like these objects when one can step inside them and actually take in the heartbeat.
I learnt will be set up for display on the famous Sackler courtyard. It was a bit beyond me how it all worked the Curator of the installation was showing how it all worked from her laptop. It was brand new technology that has not been on display before so I think it shall be interesting to see it in action. It was all connected to big metal beams and I think it was all about Visual design.
Overall, I really loved doing the tour guiding and hope that there will be more opportunities ahead. I found it tiring and yes I was nervous to do the tour guiding at the VandA but who would not be ! I think I found the first one daunting as I showed 11 people around the museum. On my second tour I showed just the one chap around the museum. At the end of my tour guiding I found that I loved doing the tour guiding and can not wait to get stuck into more opportunities.
