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There is a tree branch, a pair of riding boots and lots and lots of nail varnish. A chess board, a police constable's badge and a pile of colourful clothes. Ordinary, everyday things, mostly.

But to 16 people from more than a dozen countries around the world they have special significance, embodying what was lost - and in some cases what was found - in the baffling swirl of mental illness.
We are in the midst of a mental health crisis - advice about jogging and self-care is not enough | Suzanne Moore
The Museum of Lost and Found Potential launches in London this week, marking World Mental Health Day with an exhibition that hopes to encourage empathy, action and even anger by showing what mental illness takes away - but also what can be retrieved if it is treated properly.

"I hope it will create some urgency," says Jazz Thornton, one of the subjects, a New Zealander who has tried to kill herself a dozen times. Thornton is represented by a tree branch that saved her life during one of those attempts - and by a note she wrote to her future self during recovery on a psychiatric ward, entitled Dear Suicidal Me.

"These are tangible lives being lost," Thornton said. "This will put a face to the statistics."

Elisha London who, as chief executive of the group United for Global Mental Health, is the force behind the initiative, said: "This is the health issue that is killing our young people. Suicide is still illegal in 45 countries. Sierra Leone has one psychiatrist (for 7 million people).

"There is a lot of talk but the action is disproportionately low. We will take this to places where leaders are gathering, so that they touch it and feel it."

There is much to touch and feel in some more interactive pieces, realised by the artist Nestor Pestana. A ticker tape display with heartbreaking vignettes from Timiebi, a Nigerian woman; a reconstructed shack that was home to a Nepalese victim of human trafficking; a bank of speakers that relate the compelling stories of all participants. "The whole exhibition is about empathy," Pestana said.

Encouragingly, some of the subjects appear well on the road to recovery or at least to some acceptance and accommodation of what has happened to them.

Deeksha Chowdhury, a student from Delhi, endured years of bullying and torment because of her weight and a skin condition. A display of colourful garments represents her journey from an isolated teenager who always wore baggy black clothing to someone more self confident and outgoing.

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An artefact at the Museum of Lost and Found Potential. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

For others, artefacts on display speak of their lowest ebb. Cecilia Ashaley, a Ghanaian teacher, is represented by a wall of nail varnish in colours to mimic the west African sky, because whenever she is struggling, she seeks solace in a manicure or pedicure.

"It represents me in my most depressed mood, when I think of things like killing myself," she said by telephone from Accra (she says the UK Home Office denied her a visa to attend the opening of the museum). "I feel hopeless and not worth it. So I go to the nail bar to improve my mood.

"I love to share my experience to inspire other people not just in my country but people around the world. Having a mental condition does not mean you are ineffective, but with medication and therapy you can contribute to society."

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Graeme Moffatt pictured here as a child. Photograph: Handout

Graeme Moffat, who lives in Glasgow, has a similar fall-and-rise story that dates back more than 25 years to the day he broke his back when he fell from a tree as a teenager.

He said: "I suffered in silence for so long because I thought I was alone. That's how your mind works. I never want anyone to feel the way I felt when I thought it was just me. So I started being open about the journey I was going through."

A grocery bag represents the lowest ebb for Moffatt when he collapsed in a supermarket. For him, the exhibition is about normalising mental illness.

"It's OK to have tough times," he said. "He can get through it. You can even gain from going through these challenges - you have more empathy, more understanding, you can end up so much stronger and more capable."

Perhaps the saddest story belongs to Stuart and Annette Baker, whose daughter Mary killed herself after a three-year struggle with an eating disorder. The couple have been tireless advocates for suicide prevention and openness about mental illness in the eight years since.

Riding boots and an annotated book are the physical reminders of Mary's life - a girl who loved to ride horses, play water polo, write poetry, dive. Remarkably, eight years after her death, her parents are still able to see beyond what was lost to glimpse what they have discovered.

"Mary's potential was lost," said Stuart, "but possibly there is purpose in what we have been doing. I'm hopeful that maybe we are about to see an improvement in what we are doing with our mentally ill."

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Mary Baker, with brothers Henri and Jack, a year before she took her life. Photograph: Baker family

Visitors who pass through this coming week will be invited to leave a 40-second message spelling out what action they want their governments to take. By the time a single person has finished their recording, another person will have taken their life somewhere in the world.

The exhibition is at Unit 6, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JA, until 15 October and then travelling internationally.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found atwww.befrienders.org.
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The Museum of Lost and Found Potential: putting faces to mental health statistics

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There is a tree branch, a pair of riding boots and lots and lots of nail varnish. A chess board, a police constable's badge and a pile of colourful clothes. Ordinary, everyday things, mostly.

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The concept of a museum and its role in society has evolved dramatically over the past 20 years. No longer considered primarily a venue for those seeking to develop their educational and cultural expertise, the most successful museums now offer a wide variety of flexible social spaces that appeal to a broad visitor audience, made up of both transient visitors and members of the local community.

Whether this takes the form of cafes, restaurants and bars for formal or informal dining, engaging retail spaces that draw shoppers away from the high street and through the museum doors, or open flexible spaces that can be used for a multitude of social and educational activities, the make-up of our museums is changing.

This shift in use and the perception of what a museum 'is' has led to a rethinking of the design and strategy of both new-build museums and the redevelopment of existing institutions.

Each has the potential to play a vital role in the regeneration of cities and local communities, breathing new life - and, crucially, economic investment - into disused urban spaces, delivering valuable places for people to come together to socialise, explore new cultural channels and build stronger connections with their local community.

The ripple-effect of good design

One of the strongest recent examples of this is the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Since it opened in 2011, the gallery has welcomed over 3 million visitors, injected over £68 million into the Kent economy and led to the opening of over 150 business in Margate.

These aren't just daytrippers either. The draw of the Turner Contemporary - with its rolling programme of temporary exhibitions, café serving seasonal cuisine overlooking Margate harbour and light-filled retail space - has also contributed to a rise in local overnight stays, with 66% of visitors staying in paid accommodation in summer 2018.

The figures are impressive. The introduction of a single cultural venue - supported, of course, by the local council and wider factors such as infrastructure like HS1 - has had a profound and tangible impact on this local community. Not only has Turner Contemporary been popular during the wetter winter months but visitor numbers remained high last summer, drawing tourists off the beach and through the gallery doors.

It sets a strong template for other towns and cities across the UK and beyond in dire need of regeneration, demonstrating the ripple-effect that a new, well-designed cultural building can have, both socially and economically.

Meet, relax and enjoy museum culture

More recent still is the V&A Dundee which opened its doors last September on Scotland's east coast as the country's first ever design museum. Part of a £1bn waterfront regeneration scheme, over the past few months the V&A Dundee has been inundated with overseas and domestic visitors, drawn by the collections themselves and the venue's remarkable architecture and design.

Not only does the V&A offer an extensive programme of exhibitions exploring everything from videogames to robots and the future of design, but its interior spaces have been intelligently designed to deliver 'a living room for the city' - a brief given to us at the beginning of the project.

This expansive venue now delivers a series of free, open and inspiring spaces for the local community and tourists to meet,

relax and enjoy museum culture. From the highly-flexible café and shop - designed with an open plan aesthetic to add a social dimension to the main entrance hall - to the second-floor restaurant which looks out over the River Tay, each social space within the museum has been carefully crafted to invite visitors to linger, socialise and explore.

Are museums the new meeting spaces?

At a time when property prices are astronomical and many smaller retailers from pubs to artisan coffee shop are being squeezed off the high street, museums have a duty of care for their cities. As large-scale investment projects they have the potential to reinvigorate a local community, acting as a catalyst for change and the regeneration of disused spaces.

Closer to home, they also have an opportunity to deliver intelligently-designed and free-to-use social and retail spaces for their local communities. When the high street is in crisis, where do people go to meet over a coffee or a glass of wine after work? Museums can bridge this gap.

At the V&A Dundee, the Tatha Bar and Kitchen has 114 covers inside and another 36 on the terrace overlooking the River Tay; a stylish and contemporary space that evolves with the needs of diners from morning through lunch, and onto a bar-based offer in the evening.

The innate flexibility and relaxed ambiance of the space makes the Tatha Bar and Kitchen an elegant and sophisticated destination for after work drinks, work meetings or a catch-up with friends, competing with any high-end bar - with the bonus of being within a world-leading cultural destination.

Use the talent you have

As centres of design and cultural excellence, all museums have the raw materials to engage directly with their visitors, creating unique interactive experiences that build long-standing social and emotional connections.

Already working within the museum walls are historians, curators, educators, artists...the list goes on. Each of these individuals has something truly valuable to offer. Their knowledge and expertise.

Whether that's introducing an origami expert to guide visitors in creative approaches to gift wrapping (soon to be seen at the M+ museum in Hong Kong) or putting on a series of masterclasses with specialist craftspeople from potters to artists, there are so many opportunities for museums to maximise on this readily-available wealth of talent already on hand.

From a commercial standpoint, visitors often come away from these experiences inspired and keen to continue their individual creative pursuits and are therefore encouraged to invest in purchases direct from the museum on merchandise such as reference books or artist materials.

A lifeline for every city

Whether starting from scratch with a newbuild development or embarking on the redevelopment of an existing venue, every museum has the potential to become a lifeline for a city. A central hub of social, educational and cultural excellence, and a catalyst for change in the local area.

As the public increasingly turns away from static retail and actively seeks meaningful experiences, new sources of knowledge, and unusual spaces to meet and socialise, museums are in a powerful position to bridge the gap between a high street in crisis and a growing demand for stronger connections to places and experiences.

(Image Credits: Shutterstock)

About the author - Callum Lumsden

Callum Lumsden is recognised as a leading retail design expert for cultural and visitor destinations. His design agency specialises in creating memorable and profitable stores that create revenue and reputation for major destinations around the world.

Lumsden are proven experts in retail strategy and design, branding, merchandise system design and visual merchandising. Callum's design work in the sector has given him a unique and authoritative knowledge of the commercial opportunities and challenges open to cultural and visitor destinations globally.

His expertise and ongoing passion for the cultural sector is driven by his personal challenge to make each project a success both experientially as well as commercially. He is best known for the award winning Tate Modern Bookshop, the hugely successful retail offers in the British Museum and his UK TV appearances with broadcaster and retail guru Mary Portas.

Callum has recently completed the highly acclaimed retail and F&B offers in the V&A Dundee and is currently working for a wide range of design projects including MoMA (NYC), M+ Hong Kong, and the expansion of the Harry Potter Studio Tour for Warner Bros. in Leavesden

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How to reach a museum's social potential

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The concept of a museum and its role in society has evolved dramatically over the past 20 years. No longer considered primarily a venue for those seeking to develop their educational and cultural expertise, the most successful museums now offer a wide variety of flexible social spaces that appeal to a broad visitor audience, made up of both transient visitors and members of the local community.

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Sweat Out Your Political Frustrations on Treadmills and Trump Punching Bags

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Sweat Out Your Political Frustrations on Treadmills and Trump Punching Bags

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Very political, but a way of thinking about an interactive participatory space that would be open all the time, even when we are not actively there curating.

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Welcome to Hard Times tells us to disconnect from our apps and instead work up a sweat over the challenges facing the world.

PRAGUE - Walking into the Welcome to Hard Times Exhibition at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, visitors may well hesitate, concerned they have stumbled into the staff gym. There are rows of treadmills and cross trainers. Large mirrors are lined up alongside flat-screen TVs and posters barking motivational messages.

It is the lockers that offer the first knowing wink. Baggage can be squeezed into pigeonholes labeled "feigned tolerance" and "suppressed anger." And then there's the next hint that we're not at the local fitness studio: the looming sculpture of a naked, disdainful man with an oversized head by the entranceway.

This interactive installation - conceived by Erik Kessels and containing work by Elinor Milchan, Antuan Rodriguez, and Viktor Frešo - has a point to make. The point - spelled out in the introductory text in combative tone - is that we are too apathetic and spend too much time worrying about ourselves. We need to disconnect from our apps and instead work up a sweat over the challenges facing the world.

Admonished, we are sent off to explore with no clear route. The black, white, and red color scheme and large boxing ring call to mind Scorsese's Raging Bull. Jarring chords from the blaring news programs echo from the TVs. Hackles up.

Dominating the space is Elinor Milchan's video installation My Love Answer Me (2018), in which visitors on treadmills face passerby and surveillance footage of scenes just before high-profile terrorist attacks; the largest screen is filled with the runners from the 2013 Boston Marathon. With our feet moving and heart rate quickening, we become viscerally aware of our bodies while viewing portraits of humanity. The wall panel precedes the death tolls from all the included attacks with a quote from Yuval Noah Hari:

In terrorism fear is the main story, and there is an astounding disproportion between the actual strength of the terrorists and the fear they manage to inspire.

Milchan wants us to question our role as participants, through our creation and consumption of fear-mongering media, in this theater of war. Songwriter Keren Ann Zeidel's score, seeping into our ears through headphones, and narration by Gill Hicks, a survivor of the 2005 London terrorist attack, elevates the installation from thought-provoking to emotionally affecting. It inspires a personal reflection on what it means to see someone, along with the dangers of casting someone as "the other."

The theme of division is pursued throughout the gym, from the "them" and "us" boxing gloves to the tower of plastic water bottles bearing the names of waterborne diseases, the latter alluding to those who have access to clean water and the have-nots. Graphics on the large climbing wall detail manmade barriers around the world. The first listed is the US-Mexico border wall.

It seems inevitable in an exhibition that addresses vanity, anxiety, and disgust with people unlike oneself that Donald Trump would crop up sooner or later. In Antuan Rodriguez's installation Left or Right (2008-ongoing, curated by Marisa Caicholo), Trump's enraged face is suspended on a punching bag, alongside images of other political leaders, including Putin and Kim Jong-un. The accompanying text encourages visitors to take back power and direct their frustration against the strong men that seek to manipulate our fear. Rodriguez jokes, in an interview for DOX, it is Trump who receives most of the punches. His misshapen bag appears to bear this out.

Confronted by rows of smug faces, it is tempting to land a blow, although visitors familiar with Bushman, Baumeister, and Stack's research, which warns against the self-perpetuating nature of anger and aggressive behavior, may find themselves recoiling. In an exhibition that presents us with a myriad of complex problems around the world, smacking a picture of Bashar al-Assad in the mouth may all be a little too neat and, ultimately, unsatisfying.

Upstairs, Viktor Frešo's rows of "Niemand" sculptures (2015) - smaller versions of the statue near the entrance - oversee the action in the gym with a mixture of contempt, arrogance, and bewilderment. Their enlarged heads and vulnerable, naked bodies recall fetuses and bring to mind the idea of the Infant Monarch: a dangerous image of power unfettered by maturity. And that brings us back to Trump.

So, following a session at the Hard Times gym, have we been nudged from our self-regarding insularity and inaction? It is questionable. What the exhibition does best is to capture the overwhelming and disconcerting nature of the world's problems. There are so many things to consider; it is hard to know where to begin, where to expend energy. The fitness instructor's command, at the exhibition's start - which tells us to take individual responsibility, buck up, and get on with it - may be one of the things making us withdraw, put our heads down, and pound out our anxieties on the treadmill.

Welcome to Hard Times continues at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art (Poupětova 1, Prague 7) through February 4.

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Sweat Out Your Political Frustrations on Treadmills and Trump Punching Bags

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Welcome to Hard Times tells us to disconnect from our apps and instead work up a sweat over the challenges facing the world. PRAGUE - Walking into the Welcome to Hard Times Exhibition at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, visitors may well hesitate, concerned they have stumbled into the staff gym.

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Marilyn Scott on how museums are in a unique position to create a sense of belonging and a pride in cultural identity, but it is a position fraught with dangers. When we look back on our childhood many of the memories we have are associated with physical places- our school playground, our bedroom, the garden of the house we were brought up in. These place-centred associations stay with us very strongly into adult life. I recently returned to the place I was brought up over 40 years ago after a lengthy absence and found that I could still remember minute details - who lived in which house, my route to school, I could even remember the places that were no longer there. There was a sense of belonging - a feeling that there would always be a small part of me left in this place. I realised that I still knew a great deal about the buildings and the history of the town that did not necessarily have a direct relevance to my own experience, but was the result of many visits to the local museum through childhood and schooldays. Some of these visits were enforced through school trips, but many were voluntary since I was fascinated by the contents of the less -than-exciting 1960's displays.
That sense of association stayed with me in a way that has not been replicated until, as a parent, I settled to live in a small Surrey village where my children went to school and I discovered a small, but fascinating, local museum which I visited a few weeks after moving in. Again that museum has given me knowledge about my adopted home which has led me to feel now part of that community, even though after living here for 20 years I am still very much a newcomer, in comparison to those people who can trace their village association back over at least three or four generations.

It is this unique sense of association and belonging that a museum can engender that makes the work we do in 21st Century museums so vital to the very survival of communities be they rural or urban. Museums and galleries now make up a significant segment of civil society and there is an ever increasing need for them to reflect the needs and interests of their audiences. There is an expectation that museums and galleries will offer ever-increasing opportunities for citizens' active participation. Most communities today are constantly changing - the mobility of our population in contrast to 50 years ago is extraordinary. The situation created by the present economic climate will force people to move to where the work is and will mirror the vast moves in population caused by the decline in agricultural labouring in the 19th Century. These factors lead to disjointed communities - people who arrive in a town because a job is there but with no knowledge of what the town stands for or why it is like it is.

The Lightbox in Woking serves a particularly challenging community where the people who work in the town cannot afford to live there so they only occupy the town in their working hours and the people who live there work in London or other high-earning locations and are therefore only in the town in the evening and at weekends. Two distinct populations who rarely meet, but simply co-exist. If communities like these are to survive and thrive then there has to be a means by which they can begin to develop a feeling of belonging and gain knowledge of why the town they live in is like it is - who has lived there before them - what they did do and why, and they have to be given the chance to create some kind of history for themselves.

We then of course very quickly come up against the problem of whose history it is that we as museum professionals are trying to tell. Museums are in a unique position to create a sense of belonging and a pride in cultural identity, but it is a position fraught with dangers. Our additional complication in Woking - shared by many colleagues all over the country - is that we have a significant mix of ethnicity in the town, including a Muslim population who have lived in Woking since the 19th century and the first purpose-built mosque in the UK. This history pre-dates much of the recognised history of the town and is obviously a significant but hidden part of the story we need to tell. How do we integrate this into the very typical tale of a 19th Century railway town now populated by uninspiring 1960's office blocks which according to many has 'no significant history'.

Our solution in Woking - being in the fortunate position of starting from scratch - with no previous museum to use as reference and with a lengthy planning period due to needing time to raise money for the new museum, was to engage the local community in telling their own history. Hugely inspired by the work being done at the time by Hackney Museum and Croydon Clocktower, we engaged the local community in what we were hoping to do. There were some easy wins - the local history society, friends of local heritage sites and environmental groups keen to preserve local amenities all embraced the project enthusiastically. Less easy to engage were the ethnic minority groups for whom museums are not natural tellers of stories and those people for whom Woking was only their adopted home and who felt they had little to contribute because their knowledge of the town was, in their minds, insignificant. We spent a lot of time communicating to others through talks, newspaper articles, and radio interviews.

One of our main messages was that we were not looking for people with in-depth knowledge of the history of the town, what we were keen to obtain were stories, impressions, but above all questions - why are things as they are today. If it was a question that intrigued and interested one of our participants then there was a very good chance it would also interest our visitors once the museum was open. We tentatively held our first open meeting, really having no clear idea whether it would work - whether people would come and if they would understand what we hoped to do. 20 people attended that first meeting and I really felt we were getting somewhere when we asked 'Are there things about the town that you have never understood?' and one participant said 'I have heard it described as the town of the mad, the bad and the dead. Why?'. This brief sentence encapsulates three important elements of the history of the town - a major 19th Century mental asylum, a huge 19th Century prison and the largest cemetery in Western Europe - here was the way to introduce people to the town and that description now greets visitors as they enter the museum.

Thus our journey to discover ways of telling the history of our town in a way that was relevant to as many of our visitors as possible began. Over a period of two years we worked with those original 20 participants to develop a series of interlocking stories devised by the participants themselves. The story group became the makers and shapers of their own history rather than being the recipients of a curator's history, which may of course not be relevant to the local community at all. The work with the story group became absolutely central to the development of the museum. They were not simply treated as a focus group who met occasionally to give feedback on our ideas, they were the creators themselves and we developed a methodology whereby they came to us with their ideas and content and the professional staff acted as the sounding board - an interesting and incredibly exciting role reversal. The group became the active agents for shaping the whole museum not simply the beneficiaries of a second hand history.

It was only at the point where the themes had been developed, the stories chosen, the research had been done that we handed over to our museum designers. A huge sense of ownership of the museum had been established as each participant in the 'Story Group' had in turn engaged a group of stakeholders who had helped with research, suggested themes and stories, given us feedback on difficult issues such as how to tell the story of the mental asylum in a sensitive manner when those who had lived and worked at the asylum were still living in the town.

Reflecting back on this process now three years after the museum was opened it is interesting to consider that the current political message (2010) is one of increased localism, The Big Society, empowering communities to do things for themselves - an emphasis on public participation and the growth of self-reliance - rather than to have things done to them. In our experience using our local community to tell their own story is probably one of the most powerful and successful experiences we have ever had at The Lightbox. It has undoubtedly created a feeling of public ownership of our collections which now permeates everything we do. In the debate 'What does engagement mean?' for us it was simply realising that there were people in our community who were much better qualified to tell their own story than we were and we should engage them in making meaningful contributions to the museum. We might have had all the professional qualifications and the knowledge about how many words people read on a label and what environmental conditions the Victorian christening robe needed, but were we truly engaged with the history of a town that most of the staff were relative newcomers to?

We needed our clients as much as they needed the professionals. We were able to truly empower the group by giving them a very open brief to tell us what they thought was unique and important about their town and what they thought the legacy of the museum project should be. They became the doers not the 'done for' and became more confident and informed through the process we had enabled. We took sometimes halting steps up the ladder of involvement by first informing in the widest sense possible what the project was about and our goals, consulting, again in the widest sense on how we were to achieve those goals, involving directly a key group of people, collaborating with them as equal partners and finally empowering them to make decisions.

The resulting 'master plan' that was handed over to the designers was of course very different from the typical chronological survey which has traditionally been the route taken by many local history museums. Instead the group developed themes which centred around two areas. Firstly, everyday lives - how did people live in the town and how do they now. What work were they engaged in, how they did they spend their leisure time, where did people shop and go to school and how does that contrast with life today? This was set alongside the question 'What is special about our town and what makes it unique?' This could prove to be quite a challenge for a very ordinary Victorian railway town - on the face of it with 'no history' but the Story Group very quickly identified many unique physical sites which had a history to tell, varying from the largest cemetery in Western Europe to the first purpose-built mosque created in the UK. There was of course great debate over which special and unique sites and stories we were able to include as our space was limited but gradually the group reached consensus on what was to be selected.

The Story Group, although primarily being responsible for content development, also took a very active role in deciding how as well as what. Everyone had their own ideas on what makes a good museum display, although not all group participants (and most certainly the other groups they were talking to) had wide knowledge of museums so many references came from the media and from retail. There were widely diverging views ranging from the Pitt Rivers style 'fill up all the showcases' to a designed approach of creating arty shop windows with a montage of Kenwood food mixers!

Through this process of shaping the museum we were able to place public engagement at the forefront of everything we did and at the heart of the organisation. Our Story Group and all the stakeholders they had in turn engaged with became equal partners to ourselves in designing and helping to deliver the project. Our continued use of volunteers to help run our building and our service continues this partnership through our chosen mode of service delivery.

The Story Group helped at a very crucial stage in our development to define a new model of individual and community empowerment. The right to public ownership of the town's history had been effectively established. Our challenge of course three years later, now with an established museum, is how to retain this sense of ownership. Our 150 volunteers without whom we could simply not open our doors ensure that we do not forget how much the museum belongs to, and is in partnership with, our local community. But to ensure that the empowerment is real rather than tokenistic, we engage community representatives as members of our Board of Trustees, deciding what we do at the highest level. Also we genuinely regularly consult and communicate with our community, to ensure that we do not stray into the realms of 'doing to' rather than 'doing with'.

Community-curated exhibitions are a regular feature. Finance dictates that it will be a long time before we could ever redisplay the museum but smaller exhibitions generated by community partners are an integral part of our programming. We also take the focus away from the static collection by inviting local collectors to display their own collections in the way they want to without the dead hand of the curator intervening. Other local interest groups take space around the building to talk about their own particular topic or cause and rather than appearing out of place or insignificant amongst the collection these exhibitions provide huge interest and variety for our visitors and should not be ignored in terms of audience development. We remain open to any suggestion and it is perhaps not the nature of the suggestions that is so pleasing, but just that individuals and groups feel able, without invitation or prompt, to come to us with ideas to fill what is not 'our space' but 'their space' by right and through a true sense of ownership. The engagement we have managed to achieve has been slowly and sometimes painfully won. I know there will always be those for whom the museum is not relevant to their lives but for many their part in the creation of their museum has been a fantastically satisfying and empowering experience which has to be a great measure of success.

Marilyn Scott
Director, The Lightbox

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Active Participation: Museums Empowering the Community - Museum-iD

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Marilyn Scott on how museums are in a unique position to create a sense of belonging and a pride in cultural identity, but it is a position fraught with dangers. When we look back on our childhood many of the memories we have are associated with physical places- our school playground, our bedroom, the garden of the house we were brought up in.

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' (...) People expect to be allowed the privilege of actively identifying and redistributing cultural content for themselves, not just passively consuming it within the framework set out by the institution.'

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Jupiter Woods is a London-based, non-profit art organisation that commissions new work and supports research and experimentation by emerging and lesser-represented artists and practitioners.

As a female-led organisation, our programme centres around and actively adopts a feminist politics of organising and working, in order to create an inclusive space of collaboration and exchange, aiming to nurture marginal voices and communities in the fields of contemporary art. Jupiter Woods prioritises slow-paced production, research and active engagement as radical forms of instituting, responding to a regime where success is too strongly predicated on volume and speed of production.

By proposing cross-disciplinary approaches and alternative formats of production, presentation and dissemination of contemporary art, Jupiter Woods' work actively contributes to critical discourse amongst various practices.

Since 2014, we have worked as an exhibition space, residency programme, research and studio facility within a domestic setting with a programme consisting of solo exhibitions, discursive events and publishing.

Opening times

Friday & Saturday, 12-6pm during exhibitions
Please email info@jupiterwoods.com if you'd like to make an appointment

Jupiter Woods' main gallery is wheelchair accessible but we regret to inform that we do not have wheelchair accessible toilets. If you have any access requirements that you would like to discuss in advance of your visit, please email info@jupiterwoods.com.

Team

Carolina Ongaro (carolina@jupiterwoods.com)
Katie Simpson (katie@jupiterwoods.com)
Katrina Black (katrina@jupiterwoods.com)

~

Jupiter Woods was established in early 2014 by Hanna Laura Kaljo, Lucy Lopez, Carolina Ongaro, Barnie Page, Cory Scozzari and Emma Siemens-Adolphe, with an exhibition space and residency facility in a domestic setting.

Website built by Nick O'Reardon

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Jupiter Woods is a London-based, non-profit art organisation that commissions new work and supports research and experimentation by emerging and lesser-represented artists and practitioners. As a female-led organisation, our programme centres around and actively adopts a feminist politics of organising and working, in order to create an inclusive space of collaboration and exchange, aiming to nurture marginal voices and communities in the fields of contemporary art.

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Christoph Buchel- Picadilly Community Centre

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Christoph Buchel- Picadilly Community Centre

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Former Midland / HSBC Bank and Hauser & Wirth's Piccadilly gallery is currently being transformed into a fully functioning Community Centre. The centre will host a wide range of classes, workshops and events. Facilities will include among other things multifunctional spaces, a computer room, a non-denominational prayer room, an activity room, a community canteen, a community bar and club. Outside in the market in front of St James' Church, the Community Centre will run a stall. There will be a daily schedule of classes and events, which start on Friday 13 May and will run until Saturday 30 July.

The community centre offers free room hire. Interested parties should contact: info@piccadillycommunitycentre.org
+44 207 255 8955

Further information on Piccadilly Community Centre including an up-to-date schedule will be available closer to the opening at:
www.piccadillycommunitycentre.org

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Former Midland / HSBC Bank and Hauser & Wirth's Piccadilly gallery is currently being transformed into a fully functioning Community Centre. The centre will host a wide range of classes, workshops and events. Facilities will include among other things multifunctional spaces, a computer room, a non-denominational prayer room, an activity room, a community canteen, a community bar and club.

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Olafur Eliasson - The Collectivity Project

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Olafur Eliasson - The Collectivity Project

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Three tons of white Lego bricks were delivered to a public square in Tirana, Albania, where people were invited to build their vision of a future city. The project was also instigated in Oslo in 2006, in Copenhagen in 2008, and in New York City in 2015.

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Three tons of white Lego bricks were delivered to a public square in Tirana, Albania, where people were invited to build their vision of a future city. The project was also instigated in Oslo in 2006, in Copenhagen in 2008, and in New York City in 2015.

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The collectivity project * Artwork * Studio Olafur Eliasson

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Three tons of white Lego bricks were delivered to a public square in Tirana, Albania, where people were invited to build their vision of a future city. The project was also instigated in Oslo in 2006, in Copenhagen in 2008, and in New York City in 2015.

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Thu, Sep 26, 2019
6-7:30 pm
(free and open to the public)
RSVP via Eventbrite, appreciated but not required

Internationally renown curator and professor of contemporary art talks about her curatorial work as Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the vital role of small-scale arts institutions in Southeast Asia. →

Presented by CCA's Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice in partnership with CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

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Thu, Sep 26, 20196-7:30 pm(free and open to the public)RSVP via Eventbrite, appreciated but not required Internationally renown curator and professor of contemporary art talks about her curatorial work as Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the vital role of small-scale arts institutions in Southeast Asia.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija -  cooking in the gallery

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Rirkrit Tiravanija -  cooking in the gallery

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Utopia Station

"Utopia Station" is thought of as a stop or meeting place in both the real and figurative sense. Over a period of time, seminars, meetings, stations and performances are organized at different locations; posters and publications are also a part.

Venice's "Utopia Station" is the first major stop. Its physical form was conceived by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Liam Gillick. Artists and architects from across the globe design smaller structures, models and walls. Around these, other small format objects and projects will be presented. Posters resulting from an open call to 160 artists will be shown here, as well as in public spaces around the city. Throughout the entire summer, a diverse program will be held in "Utopia Station".

See the press release.

Arsenale di Venezia,
see the map

Curators:

Molly Nesbit

Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Rirkrit Tiravanija
Press release

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Universes in Universe - Pat Binder, Gerhard Haupt

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Utopia Station, 50th Venice Biennial, 2003

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Utopia Station "Utopia Station" is thought of as a stop or meeting place in both the real and figurative sense. Over a period of time, seminars, meetings, stations and performances are organized at different locations; posters and publications are also a part. Venice's "Utopia Station" is the first major stop.

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DAM PROJECTS is a curatorial collective founded in 2014 by Daniella Rose King, Amanprit Sandhu and Morgan Quaintance. Inclusive and anti-elitist, the collective use temporary exhibitions, documentary films and events to support emerging, underexposed and unorthodox artists and art scenes, as well as socio-cultural and political developments, discourses and debates.

Email us on info@dam-projects.com.

12 one-day exhibitions that ran from Nov 2014 - Nov 2015. Featuring 6 solo shows from recent UK art school graduates and 6 exhibitions looking at emerging international art scenes.

Sunday School was held at our venue, A_SPACE.

Go top

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DAM PROJECTS is a curatorial collective founded in 2014 by Daniella Rose King, Amanprit Sandhu and Morgan Quaintance. Inclusive and anti-elitist, the collective use temporary exhibitions, documentary films and events to support emerging, underexposed and unorthodox artists and art scenes, as well as socio-cultural and political developments, discourses and debates.

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Exhibition Research Lab is a public venue and a research centre dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of exhibitions and curatorial knowledge.

info@exhibition-research-lab.co.uk

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Exhibition Research Lab is a public venue and a research centre dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of exhibitions and curatorial knowledge. info@exhibition-research-lab.co.uk

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You are invited to join a discussion on the shifting contours of the global and the local, and how this shift influences the working conditions and obligations of freelancers today. Organised around the experiences of curators, Humans of the Institution will be a nuanced debate important to freelancers and institutions alike, seeking dialogues of consequence to change "industry standards" in the arts and further afield.

Humans of the Institution is an international gathering in Amsterdam, and part of the Amsterdam Art Weekend and DAI Roaming Assembly. It will take place as a two-day symposium at Veem House for Performance. The programme will be broadcast and archived online by Curatorial Practice (UiB). The weekend will be followed by one day of Working Groups each producing a series of statements published with L'Internationale online.

This is an open call to an international network of Delegate Partners to connect with this debate by supporting the participation of freelance curators from their own and associated regions. Institutions, patrons and funding bodies wishing to become a Delegate Partner, and individuals wishing to become a Delegate, please e-mail humansoftheinstitution [​at​] uib.no before October 15, 2017 with "Delegate" in the subject line.
Weekend and Working Groups
The Saturday programme, entitled Whose Global, Whose Local?, will hone in on the freelancer as a mobile agent whose presence and experiences may help chart the shifting pressures and frictions of a changing international order.

The Sunday programme, entitled Precarious Practices, will open up the mutable, unfixed and increasingly unstable categories of institutions and individuals, along with the emergence of cybernetic systems.

Buy tickets to the weekend programme here.

On Monday the programme will shift to a set of thematic and practically oriented Working Groups-forums for concrete action, fact-finding, awareness raising and solidarity. The groups will be of 12 to 20 participants each. This is an open callfor interested participants. Please e-mail a short statement of motivation for the Working Group of your interest to humansoftheinstitution [​at​] uib.no before October 15, 2017 with "Working Group" in the subject line.

Archives & Individuals convened by Michelle Wong with the Van Abbemuseum, hosted by New Urban Collective
Biennials & Guest Work convened by Natasha Ginwala with Marieke van Hal, hosted by Manifesta Foundation
Boycott & Mobilisation convened by Joanna Warsza with Lara Khaldi and Rachel O'Reilly, hosted by De Appel
Censorship & Strategy convened by Ekaterina Degot with Katia Krupennikova and Heejin Kim, hosted by Framer Framed
Critical Regionalism convened by Anne Breure with Reem Fadda and Maria Hlavajova, hosted by the Stedelijk Museum
Fees & Conditions convened by Platform BK and The Norwegian Association of Curators with W.A.G.E., hosted by Frontier Imaginaries
Anthology
An edited anthology of English translations of significant texts on curatorial practice will be published following Humans of the Institution. The aim is for the texts to be published in their original language as well as English, accompanied by contextualising short essays. This is an open call for existing and published texts (any format; essays, reviews etc.) that are important to curatorial practice globally, but that are not yet accessible in English.

To suggest texts, please e-mail
-a synopsis of the text in English (max 100 words)
-the reason for its importance to curatorial practice (max 200 words, in English)
-a scan or image of the original text (or online link)
-publication information
-your full contact information

Submissions via e-mail to: translatethis [​at​] uib.no by December 15, 2017.

Co-presented by Frontier Imaginaries and Curatorial Practice (UiB), in partnership with the DAI Roaming Assembly, Veem House for Performance, Amsterdam Art Weekend, De Appel, the Working Group hosts, and core funders Mondriaan Foundation and The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK). Spatial design provided by Uglycute. Humans of the Institution has been initiated through dialogue between curators Anne Szefer Karlsen and Vivian Ziherl.

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Humans of the Institution - Announcements - e-flux

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You are invited to join a discussion on the shifting contours of the global and the local, and how this shift influences the working conditions and obligations of freelancers today. Organised around the experiences of curators, Humans of the Institution will be a nuanced debate important to freelancers and institutions alike, seeking dialogues of consequence to change "industry standards" in the arts and further afield.