7 hour meetings

Challenging to make myself write as so busy. We are all trying to do our normal jobs at the same time, so reading emails about artistic content and discussing pork pie procedures, whilst the Mac Doctor tells me my iMac is dead. Our Thursday meeting last 7-8 hours followed by a site visit and a scheduling meeting. If something is funny,like Mark telling us about making chairs out of old RFH archive programmes... ( an HLF participation project)whereby a lot of gaffa was used and it was shit... we laughed and laughed til we could hardly breathe. That’s the upside of being over tired. Things are just starting to become impossible. The metronome will be 2 weeks late. The cabinet making is up to the wire.Sal and I are in Arup, structural engineers, re-taking the films of plans and quantities books. The meetings are multi faceted.. we blast through multi layer agendas. The live performer element was worrying for us as we know that a live musician will need direction and given context in order to connect and give a meaningful performance. Rachel, one of the leads had the wonderful idea of the performer being a dancer. It solves all the problems of ‘ stopping the music’ and they look wonderful even just walking. They can move to all the music and demonstrate highlight the architecture. More soon.

So much to do

Group emails, sharing, sharing, sharing...dropbox so full ...constantly up-dated. Grabbing info that is still resonating from previous articles read. Getting to the nub of info we need to relay/share/display. Alongside like a galloping horse is the tech requirements ...monitors, media players, the back end programming and brain of the exhibition. Then me and Sal scrabbling about on the floor, me being a hand model...photographing the archive....finding letters from the Queen's secretary about her coming to the opening...extraordinary language...'Dear Heart....' We are making art form the history....photocopying letters, programme amendments, PRS forms from 50 years ago so that people can touch them...read them like we are allowed to, but touching the letters will feel special...significant...we want to transfer the feeling of discovery.

hand drawn

We use paper and pen to dream, imagine and process info. Here is Andrew lock's mind-map.

I draw budgets in boxes... all figures will change/flow between the boxes, but a starting point is essential.

Site visit

Can't believe how thrilled I feel to go to work at the Southbank Centre. Today was our weekly meeting and then a long site visit measuring and plotting and realising our ideas. It was an massive step in our imaginations to be able to have absorbed so much knowledge/history about the place and then to return. One skill I have learned from working artistically in buildings is map making. I can quickly orientate myself and remember room shape and details. I busily sketch rooms and we measure knooks and ceilings. We are working with a tech producer who says 'no' to everything. We understand that we just need not ask at this stage. Everyone else on the Southbank team says 'yes', or they will 'ask the question to see if it can be possible'. The Purcell room walls are incredible. Yehudi Menuhin stamped his foot saying he could not play violin in an a-symetric room.... as a result the back walls to the Purcell Room stand like fantasy mountain sides...... We work long hours, think about detail and global ideas to make the exhibition flow. We worry about the clock, we trust ourselves to know that we will make this work.

Looking for treasure in Chafford Hundred

Chafford Hundred, I kept seeing those words in emails and I kept thinking, what is it? rather than, where is it? We met at Chaffered Hundred it felt like a Russian out-post in the sideways rain and ice wind. We sheltered in a Tescos and bought 'reduced-price' sandwiches. It felt grim. Past Ikea was the warehouse which holds the old BBC control room from the Queen Elizabeth Hall, staircases and plant room equipment and other treasures. We spent three hours unpacking stuff, measuring and identifying what was treasure to us and what was boring. Best find.... a large box or box frame....with a handle...we pulled the handle to reveal a fold-down seat. There was a ticket from 1974 in the seat and the seat number was T1, which is an ushers seat.It was beautiful. I discovered that my attention span is much shorter than Sal's and Andrew's....I tend to drift off in a dream after a couple of hours...I did the same the next day...good to know!Then back on trains to London and chats over pizza and beers to shape the exhibition.

First time exhibition designer....

So what is the process, how do you put together an exhibition? Where do you start? A sketch, an outline. A working title. The original title was 'Made with Care', which felt uncomfortable for the ambition of the exhibition.... Concrete Dreams is strong, pioneering... A narrative was put together, with elements the archive team and heads of departments wanted included. A space was found in the building to create a walk-through journey. This must have been a really challenging part of the process as the exhibition last July was destined for backstage at the QEH, and is now kind of backstage in the Purcell Rooms...glad I wasn't privy to that and well done folks who did the negotiating! Next stage is getting the exhibition designers in. KlangHaus was chosen for our experience and dramatic response to journeys through buildings, our ability to layer tonnes of content without overwhelming the audience and our knack of inducing fast pulse-rate responses to architecture. We are working with LYN Atelier, very experienced at exhibition design, public outdoor art and architectural/interior design. We are working with one part of that team, Andrew Lock, an utter joy. Next stage is establishing how we all work together and immersing ourselves in all the archive material. This is a stage of back to back meetings. Talking, talking, talking is essential, it's the only way a huge group mind can come to any consensus. This is where we are at.

Re-opening the Queen Elizabeth Hall

We've taken a huge leap of faith. The KlangHaus team are exhibition designers for the re-opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It feels amazing. The hard work starts this week. We've had lots of weeks of waiting for the go ahead and a couple of weeks of immersing ourselves in the archive of the building. Working in the Southbank Centre is truly awe-inspiring. I love it 100%. The meeting after meeting, sometimes in glass box-like offices overlooking the Thames...or on the top floor of the Royal Festival Hall over looking The Houses of Parliament. The staff are incredibly skilled and can be described as 'professional'. I recognise how I leap in and react spontaneously in negative ways without measuring my answer...... although it's kind of honest, it's also 'unformed' and in this atmosphere shout of being ugly...interesting...I'd never thought that I'd want to act in a 'professional' manner, rock n roll's the way ahead yeah? But I'm finding more and more with KlangHaus that being professional leads to better results and essentially allows you to get you what you need. I'm not putting my sometimes firery responses to bed, but enjoying a wider pallet of ways to interact is making my life bigger. It's this interaction with people that I thoroughly enjoy and I'm collecting the budgetary emails for deep in the future publication for sheer skill of these Southbank women to navigate financial dealings. (I say women because most of them are.) The exhibition is called Concrete Dreams..tickets can be booked for free here, https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/127136-concrete-dreams-2018