Sense of Place – part one

09 Dec Sense of Place – part one

Having worked on the Living Communities project in Perth I was keen to carve out a deeper ‘educational-digital-projects-that-are-not-dull’ kind of niche for myself. Working in Perth  Museum and Art Gallery was a great experience. I love museums. And engaging kids with content and spaces, that are both often perceived as ‘dull’, is a thrill.
So, 18 January, 2013 I approached The McManus | Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum. One covering email and a link to my ‘services‘ PDF later and I’m the luckiest chap there is…
Because the National Gallery for Scotland had, only days before, invited McManus to collaborate on a group project (with three other museums across Scotland) called Scotland Creates: A Sense of Place. While McManus has plenty of talented artists they needed someone to deal with ‘digital’ stuff. Nice timing, eh?!
Almost 12 months later I’ve only made passing references to McManus and Sense of Place because we’ve been saving the best of what we’ve done for the exhibition. Of course as time goes on some of that gets relegated because even better work comes along and there simply isn’t room for all of it!
So, there will be a few gems that I will be able to share over the next few months as ‘DVD extras‘ to what we have in the exhibition… speaking of which…
The exhibition, Sense of Place, opens this week! Thursday 12 December is the private view and Friday 13 is the official opening. Here are the private view cards – we have four (of course) which split our Instagram’d poster image into four… (collect ’em al!)

Sense of Place was constructed around the need to get more young people into museums. McManus already has a great track record of getting young people through its door because of YAG! The Youth Action Group (YAG) is simply a couple of hours on a Thursday evening, when the museum is closed to everyone else, and we get creative. YAG is 14+ and will start again in February. If you, or someone you know, is interested, drop me a line or contact McManus directly and ask for Keri.
I’ll say more about Sense of Place another time, for now it’s enough to say that there were train journeys and QR Codes and Hollywood actors and iPads and steam rollers and animation and Instagram and walking through walls and time travel and Tumblr and modern dance interpretation and… and… oh, and tea! Quite a lot of the time there was tea.
Scotland Creates: Sense of Place
The McManus | Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum
Opens Friday 13 December, 10am
To throw your hat into the ring for a limited number of private view invitations, please leave a comment below. Quick!