Insights from Behind the Scenes of The New Curators Project

The New Curators Project is an annual programme run by UCL Special Collections and Newham Heritage Month. It offers 10 young adults in East London the chance to develop the skills and experience needed to start a career in the cultural heritage sector. For Newham Heritage Month 2023, The New Curators created the exhibition ‘Breaking the Wall: The Power of Performance’, which showcased Newham’s creativity throughout history and how it has often fused with activism and protest in order to create groundbreaking theatre and visual art.

Here, the young people from The New Curators Project share some insights from behind the scenes of creating the exhibition.

How long did it take to create the exhibition?

This project was created over the course of about eight weeks of evening workshops and several days of visiting local archives, including in our own time. We started in mid-March and finally finished the main content in May, spending the last few weeks till June organising engagement with our public on social media.

What was your research process like?

We conducted research mainly through local public archives in Newham and Tower Hamlets – this is where we found most of the subjects for our exhibition- in fact for the most part we found little accessible information about these topics online that wasn’t bested by the firsthand information the archives offered in the form of newspapers in microfiche, collections of pamphlets and posters, photographs and out of print books.

What’s your favorite part of the exhibition?

My personal favorite part of the exhibition is the large collection of pamphlets and flyers we found in the Newham Archives – the best of which are reproduced in the exhibition. They are art objects in themselves, excellent examples of guerrilla printing and graphic design, the art created by people actively involved in the plays and performances they advertised, rather that farmed out.

What was your general experience in the new curator’s program?

The New Curator’s experience has been an excellent opportunity for me, one I almost missed. I have particularly enjoyed pouring over the wealth of information available in public archives- and feeling the weight of history in the places I am familiar with, understanding that these events played out in the same streets and buildings in which I walk, and trying fruitlessly to imagine experiencing them and knowing the people who really did.

Applications are now open to take part in the 2024 New Curators Project, find out more and apply by the 17 February deadline here.