Collaboration with Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, World Stories Young Voices

I am a freelance researcher who has been helping the World Art curator Harriet Hughes on the “World Stories Young Voices’’ exhibition at Brighton Museum. 

World Stories: Young Voices is a celebration of Brighton Museum’s world art collection which has been redisplayed with the involvement of young people, members of source communities and creative professionals. It is the South East’s flagship museum project for the London 2012 Festival  and part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

During the preparation of “world story, young voices” exhibition at Brighton Museum, we worked on the design and layout of the gallery, we discussed the artworks and we created the labels of objects without necessarily focusing on the historical and technical aspects of the artworks. We formed a group consist of 8 Iranians, aiming to relate to the objects in order to convey our personal observation and emotions.

The calligraphy box particularly stood out for me due to its beautiful poetry and miniature. I translated the poem and recorded a reciting in both Persian and English. The poem can be listened to via the QRL code available at the museum. I also acted as a guide in Iran section of the exhibition on the opening day.

During the project I ran workshops to teach Iranian calligraphy to audience. I also made badges with the calligraphy designs chosen by the audience. The main purpose of these event was to engage the audience and encourage them to learn some aspects of other cultures which is the main purpose of the exhibition. In this project, participants (Children aged 3-7) were invited to create their own pieces of art. They were inspired by the traditional and contemporary Iranian motifs and typography. They would then were encouraged to interpret these sources in their own way. After creating their art they were asked to select parts of the art piece to make badges out of it.