Horniman Museum and Gardens: Africarnival

Every summer, the Horniman hosts a large outdoor event and, for the second year, we were invited to capture the community coming together in Forest Hill. This yeah, Africa was the theme for the whole of the summer in the museum and gardens inspired by their incredible African collections. Africarnival was the culmination of all the events and activities that had happened before it.

We were really struck by the scale of the event and the incredible atmosphere across the gardens as audiences watched acrobats, danced to live bands, paraded in the carnival, took dance workshops, ate Ghanian street foods and generally smiled from ear to ear. It was truly joyous to share in the experience with such a diverse crowd that could only be found in London.

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Dulwich Picture Gallery: Visual to Vocal

We recently captured a wonderful performance at Dulwich Picture Gallery that was the culmination of eight weeks work by the twenty strong group of singers and composers.

This interesting group of singers and songwriters were brought together through a collaboration by Dulwich Picture Gallery and English Touring Opera. Inspired by an ETO programme called Turtle Song, the Gallery brought together a group of dementia patients and their carers for a second year. The group were joined by a number of professional musicians and some students from Dulwich College. Together the whole group wrote lyrics and songs inspired by the stunning collection at the Gallery. Watch our video documenting the process to find out more:

This was a particularly moving performance for me as my grandfather suffers from alzheimers and there was a lovely couple involved who reminded me of my grandparents, only, in their case, it is the woman who has dementia. It was so inspiring to watch all of the group sing together and know that dementia was not part of the performance or the process; something to accommodate and understand but never the focus. The focus was on creativity and making something as a group in the present. The final pieces were wonderful and I am still singing some of the songs weeks after the final performance.

Dulwich Picture Gallery: Hockney Printmaker

The Dulwich Picture Gallery opened a new special exhibition this week: Hockney Printmaker and invited us along to the press launch to meet the curator of the exhibition, and Head of Prints and Multiples for Christie’s New York, Richard Lloyd.

We have made a series of five short and digestible videos covering some key elements of this beautifully crafted exhibition. The first video covers one of David Hockney’s earliest print series: The Rake’s Progress, which you can hear more about in this video:

The next four videos will be released throughout the exhibition, which closes on 11 May 2014.