Tag: Culture

Medical Culture Festival – Life Saviours: Then and Now

Published on 14th January 2021

New FREE online festival to celebrate medical heritage, health and wellbeing in the heart of London Bridge.  Join us for this celebration of health and wellbeing in the heart of London Bridge February 17-24, 2021. New for 2021, Medical Culture Festival: Life Saviours Then and Now, is an online festival from the London Bridge Medi-Culture District partners. The online programme of free events includes talks, panel discussions, workshops and walking tours about the history of medicine and the future of health. The full programme is available at teamlondonbridge.co.uk/lifesaviours-events London Bridge has a long history connected with health and well-being, which was institutionalised after the first hospital was established in the area around the 12th century in what is now Southwark Cathedral. Followed by Old St Thomas’s Hospital in the 13th century and Thomas Guy Hospital in the 18th century, this area has seen the Black Death, the Cholera outbreak, the Spanish Flu and more recently the Covid-19 Pandemic.  Fascinating, fun and deeply significant to today, the festival tells the story of the people and places that have played their part in the history and development of health and medicine.  The programme will appeal to a wide audience, including sessions for families and young people. Places can be reserved at teamlondonbridge.co.uk/lifesaviours. Some events will have limited places available. Find out more here. Places are limited, so book your place today! Partners: Florence Nightingale Museum, Gordons Pathology Museum, Guys and St Thomas’s Hospital, Kings College London, The Old Operating Theatre, London Borough of Southwark, Team London Bridge.

Missoni: Art & Colour

Published on 11th January 2021

Explore the Fashion and Textile Museum’s popular exhibition, MISSONI ART COLOUR, organised by the MA*GA Art Museum in collaboration with Missoni, with the Museum’s Head of Exhibitions, Dennis Nothdruft. With the founding of their eponymous company in 1953 in Gallarate, Italy, Ottavio and Rosita Missoni changed the fashion world’s – and our – perceptions of the knitted garment forever. The combination of Ottavio’s interest in art, design and colour, and Rosita’s innate sensibility to clothing engendered a whole new approach to dressing. The inaugural Missoni collection, called ‘Milano-Simpathy’, was presented by the couple at the famous La Rinascente store in 1958. A fashion show for the press was staged in 1966; the unconventional use of colour and pattern in knit made it the first of many successful shows over the following decades. Join the Fashion and Textile Museum for this Online Event and discover the creative process of Italian fashion house, Missoni, and the textiles of Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, in the context of 20th century fine art. One of the most respected exponents of the ‘Made in Italy’ concept, the work of Ottavio and Rosita Missoni is deeply rooted in modern art, making the Missoni brand distinctive in the world of international fashion. Tickets are £5. Book now. 

Get Creative with Tower Bridge at Home

Published on 08th January 2021

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Tower Bridge may not be open, but there are plenty of activities you can dive into at home! Designed to compliment and enhance your a visit along with your knowledge of Tower Bridge, these family friendly activities are sure to do just that. Children’s Art Week 2020 Learn to marble, make your own comic strip and even try some origami! Learn Semaphore Semaphore is a way of sending messages to people who you can see but are too far away to talk to. Using your arms (or flags), you can spell out words – each position means a different letter. Before the radio was invented, semaphore was used to communicate with ships to check they were ready to pass through. Making a moving Tower Bridge Picture Got a printer, scissors and blutak to hand? Create your own moving Tower Bridge picture with this cut out. Make a stop motion film Recreate the moving bus that jumped over an opening Tower Bridge in 1952! Make an origami boat  Thousands of boats pass under Tower Bridge every year. Follow the instructions to make your very own origami flotilla. Dot to dot and colouring sheets  Pens and pencils at the ready! Enjoy a series of dot to dots and colouring sheets.  

Borough Market recipes

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Theres no doubt about it that lockdown has given a lot of us more time to get creative in the kitchen. Whether it be to break up the working from home day with the evening, or simply having more time on our hands, we’ve seen (yes a lot of banana bread) but also some incredibly creative and delicious recipes being whipped up in kitchens all over the world. From cauliflower gnocchi with sage butter and hazelnuts to a good old fashioned sausage roll, Borough Markets have recipes to get you salivating and most definitely inspired. See Borough Markets recipes here. 

Foale and Tuffin: Made in England

Delve into the 1960s, with a look back at the exhibition Foale & Tuffin: Made in England, curated by Head of Exhibitions Dennis Nothdruft in 2009/10. Through this online talk, Dennis will explore the work of these two influential designers who were at the heart of the cultural explosion in London in the sixties. The Foale and Tuffin label was what cool girls wore – colourful, pop-inspired mini-dresses and trend-setting trouser suits were just some of the key pieces that were ahead of their time in developing popular, desirable fashion. Foale and Tuffin: Made in England charts the very personal story of two women who set up on their own with just a lot of courage and £200 in their pockets, to becoming two key British fashion designers of the 1960s and the part they played in creating the changing London scene. Book now.

The Skill of Narrative & Stitched Textiles

The 62 Group of Textile Artists presents The Skill of Narrative & Stitched Textiles, the third talk in their popular annual lecture series at the Fashion and Textile Museum. This online lecture will introduce 62 Group members Emily Jo Gibbs and Richard McVetis and their respective projects The Value of Making and The Potential of Stitch. The Value of Making (a series of hand stitched portraits of makers) by Emily Jo Gibbs Emily investigates how by taking the time to slowly describe someone in stitch you convey your admiration. Celebrating people who make things by the investment of time in making their portraits, a quiet, thoughtful act of care and value. Emily will describe how this project grew out of a collaboration with Bridget Bailey exploring how one might make a portrait of an Artist and evolved into the championing of people who make things for a living, depicting them through the tools that they use. Initially Emily chose seven contemporary Makers whose work she admired because of their design aesthetic, making skills and materiality, across a broad range of disciplines. Katie Treggiden wrote, ‘there are things Emily is able to articulate through the physically invested work of stitching…. that might elude both writers and photographers’. Gibbs will conclude by talking about her latest project that continues the conversation The Potential of Stitch by Richard McVetis This paper explores a 15-year fascination and obsession with a single stitch technique and how the expressive properties of this process have enabled Richard to visualise abstract concepts such as Time and Space. It is through stitch and making that Richard investigate time and place. Using hand embroidery, he records his time through multiples of dots, lines, and crosses meticulously stitched. Each drawn mark or stitch is a mantra; the stitches become markers of lived time. This seemingly humble, inconsequential repetitive action often overlooked and dismissed as part of the mundane. Connotations of the domestic reduce these actions to the field of the home, of the amateur, for Richard, however, it restores a sense of order. It informs a more profound comprehension and connection to the world. There is intimacy in this labour-intensive way of making; the ritual and repetition create an in-depth focus and an internal Space-Time specific to the artist. This thinking will be explored through a series of McVetis’s recent artworks, whilst also referring to the practice of Agnes Martin and Vija Celmins, whose deep focus and skill helped translate feelings and the world around them. Book now. 

Rear Window at White Cube

Published on 04th January 2021

‘Rear Window’ is an online exhibition at White Cube, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s famous 1954 film about the seductions, and the dangers, of looking. Hitchcock returned obsessively to the theme of voyeurism, delighting in forcing on his audience the queasy thrills of the unobserved observer, and implicating them in the associated risks of seeing what one shouldn’t, or misinterpreting what one sees. ‘Rear Window’ is an invitation to consider how artists construct scenes and suggest narratives, use cinematic devices to tease our innate voyeurism, and how they explore and challenge the idea of ‘the gaze’ which Hitchcock’s film was instrumental in formulating. Curated by Susanna Greeves, Director, Museum Liaison, White Cube. Artists: Ellen Altfest, Jeff Burton, Gillian Carnegie, Julie Curtiss, Judith Eisler, Celia Hempton, Danica Lundy, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Laurie Simmons, Jeff Wall and Carrie Mae Weems.\ See the exhibition here. 

Discover HMS Belfast Story

Published on 29th December 2020

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Whilst you are unable to visit in person, IWM have created an interactive timeline where you’re able to explore the HMS Belfast Story. Discover it’s history, hear the unique stories of those who served on board, and read about the adventures that the Royal Navy cruiser embarked on as a world-touring warship, from the Arctic Circle to East Asia. Explore the timeline here.  Image: HMS Belfast leaving Scapa Flow for the Normandy beaches, June 1944. © IWM (A 25665) ©IWM (A 25665)

PHILIP PULLMAN’S GRIMM TALES ONLINE

Published on 21st December 2020

New theatrical readings of deliciously gruesome tales. Based on the book by Philip Pullman. Directed by Justin Audibert, Rachel Bagshaw, Polly Findlay, Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, Ola Ince and Bijan Sheibani Enter a perilous world of murderous step-mothers, devious Kings and fearless children… Adapted by Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Unicorn are thrilled to present a deliciously gruesome selection of six theatrical readings from Grimm Tales, re-told for the whole family by an extraordinary cast. These classic fairy tales, distilled from centuries of storytelling, are timeworn but honed for the next generation to discover anew. Unicorn’s selection includes classic favourites with new discoveries, and takes us to the very heart of imagination and speaks of the things it finds there – fear, courage, compassion and wonder. 5 October – 21 February 2021. Find out more

Tower Bridge Beach

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Believe it or not, between 1930 and 1970 the Tower of London used to be just at popular for its beach as it was for it Tower. Families would flock to the ‘seaside’ even dipping their toes in the ‘sea.’ Children would build sandcastles and eat ice cream whilst there was entertainment and deck chairs to rent.  Many of the families who went to the beach were from the East End and couldn’t afford to go to the seaside in holiday, and would regularly visit. The beach was officially opened in 23 July, 1934 when King George V declared the area would remain free for the city’s children to use. The beach closed during the war, but resumed in 1946. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that there were concerns over pollution in the river with the beach officially closing in 1971. Image: Henry Grant