Our work is is two complementary areas – cultural development – museums, exhibitions and curation and social enterprise development….

Exhibitions and Interpretation

Working on various projects for Jersey Heritage as part of the overall Island Masterplan we developed in 2011. We’re focusing immediately on the Death of Major Peirson by John Singleton Copley, RA. We are doing the interpretation and presentation for the painting for a major exhibition about the 1781 invasion of Jersey by the French:

Social Enterprise

Heartlands, the social enterprise I’ve been working on since 2006, in various capacities but mainly as Interim Director, Development Director and exhibition designer, now nears completion.  The bottom set of pictures is the site as it was and the top set as it now is. Click on the pictures (which have not been re-sized) to advance them:

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Cities…..

14th – at University College London speaking on future cities and sustainable (resilient) heritage for May Casar at the Centre for Sustainable Heritage at UCL.

12th -  at the IPPR London Policy Conference at the South Bank Centre, London. Boris Johnson spoke well. And the Conference covered:

Better Thinking for the Capital

The first London Policy Conference takes place as we approach the eve of 2012 – a critical year for the UK’s capital. The election for the next Mayor of London and London Assembly takes place in May, the city hosts the celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June and the capital plays host to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games from July-September. This Conference will consider the major policy challenges facing the city and ask how we shape its future.  Set to become an annual event – a ‘Davos for London’ – it will ask how London maintains its place in the world and how should policies now embrace ideas for the future to meet the challenges the city faces head on? Mayor of London Boris Johnson and leading candidate Ken Livingstone will both give keynote addresses to the Conference, alongside many other leading UK and international business figures, thinkers and commentators. Jointly hosted by leading UK think tank IPPR and London’s new think tank Centre for London, which is being incubated by Demos, the conference will be a platform and network for all those with an interest in London’s future.

Culture….

6th – at Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire – planning for the Culture and Tourism Conference 2012 which I am facilitating, this March, with Chrysalis Arts and the Economic Partnership for North and East Yorkshire (and York). The problem is how to connect related but actually disparate experiences into linked value chains that can be participated in by many providers and then measured:

Communities……

Heartlands nears completion at the top of this post are pictures from a recent trip.

26th – speaking at cultural tourism conference for the Government of Jersey. Talking about the developing interpretation plan for the whole Island that SFL is working on.  We’re investigating both to turn historical narrative into story and story into 3D experiences in exhibition, sites and landscapes.

23rd – running a workshop on developing Yorkshire’s tourism offer for the York and North Yorkshire Economic Partnership, in York. First of a series on developing the visitor experience and the visitor economy in York and North Yorkshire across the tourism sector.  I’ll be running a conference on cultural tourism next March for the Chrysalis Arts and the Economic Partnership at Fountains Abbey.

23rd – also speaking at a TEDx in Wakefield at Beam on the Sense and the City exhibition – see below.

21st – running a workshop for the National Trust’s Visitor Experience consultancy team with Marvin Close and Yoon Bahk on how to turn narrative into story and story into 3D realisation. We looked at Sissinghurst and Castle Drogo…. a preliminary really, but a great day. The Trust has superb stories to tell. See illustrations from the NT day here.
Thinking about TEDx for London for 2012 with Evan @ Seeper. In my role as Curator of the Future at London Transport Museum. And see warm words on Sense and the City the latest exhibition I curated at LTM London Underground Tube Diary – Going Underground’s Blog. Urbanism, here.

And see also the latest fly through of the Heartlands project – one of  a number of regeneration projects I’ve been closely involved with. The latest in a series which began with Eureka! – a while ago. You may need to refresh your browser….. Since 2006 I have acted variously as Creative Director, Development Director and Interim Director and Stephen Feber Ltd is the exhibition designer.  And until the Spring of this year I’ve helping Scott James, the Programme Director and Cornwall Council deal with the wide variety of issues that occur in any construction project. I also edited, designed and wrote parts of the funding application to the Big Lottery Fund in 2007, which won the project £22 million and therefore made it possible. This is the main site - Heartlands, Cornwall. Heartlands Blog, Cornwall. The buildings in the distance on the Blog picture show the photovoltaic panels on the roofs.

1st November – at Rowan Arts for a meeting the Trustees meeting – I have just joined the Board

2nd at Goldsmiths to see Clare Cooper of MMM about financial and cultural resilience

3rd, 4th, 5th at the European Psychoanalysis and Film festival @ BAFTA. Themes of migration, boundary crossing, immigration and emigration. The Institute of Psychoanalysis organises.

http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff6/epff6_programme.pdf.

Films included the Red Shoes by Michael Powell. And:

Some good reviews of the new exhibition at London Transport Museum for which I have been the Executive Curator:

Sinclair C5 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Sense And The City @ London Transport Museum | Londonist

Exhibitions – London Transport Museum

SENSE AND THE CITY – i am nipper

Covent Garden London : Find Out What’s On in Covent Garden London including Opera, Theatre, Music, Art, Clubs, Museums and Attractions – Search in London – Booking Online

More on this when photographs are uploaded.

Trips to:

Durham to look at the lead mining museum at Killhope.

The rather good but fake galena mine at Killhope

 
Jersey for Stage II Masterplanning for the interpretation plan for the Island.

Derby – to review the museum service

Marseilles for a project for a science centre in Brazil.  This is the rather wonderful Le Corbusier hotel where we stayed:

Hotel le Corbusier, Marseilles

Friday 20th – to Windsor Castle for a Royal Collection Thinking Day about – well – the place where the Queen lives.  An amazing collection of buildings with over a million visitors annually and real problems processing them all. A mere 900 years of continuous occupation (apart from a little Monarchic hiatus during the Civil War) – started by William the Conqueror.

Also this week progress on London Transport Museum’s Sense & the City project, for which I am Executive Curator – see new images of the exhibition & Urban on this Blog:

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and the Blog at Sense & the City – London Transport Museum | London DataStore

We have interviewed 9 RCA students about their work which is part of the exhibition. Here’s Sergio – waiting for his final edit in fact:

New Bus for London Re-imagined by Sergio Camiera from stephen feber on Vimeo.

Jersey Master planning work started on 12 and 13 May and I was at the Radio Tower running the first of a series of interpretation planning workshops for the Island. Great time in a beautiful place. Jersey Heritage has 6 main sites, a number of smaller ones and two major stakeholder groups the National Trust and the Société Jersiaise. Of course all of the workshops I run are in stunning locations…..

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And over last weekend Dining with Alice at Elsing Hall. I’m a supporter of Artichoke a ‘Heart’:Artichoke Hearts | Artichoke.

Dining with Alice, Elsing Hall, Norwich 2011 from Artichoke Trust on Vimeo.

And on the 9th up to Durham to start the Options Appraisal for the new Unitary Authority’s museum holdings. This is to see whether the Museum Service can be outsourced to a Trust of some flavour.  A real contrast between Norfolk and Durham – Durham hardly has a museum service at all, whereas Norfolk is a well resourced and well funded operation.

Seeing an old friend at the Barrow Cadbury Trust, Sara Llewellin who has been there as Chief Exec for about 18 months and already is doing good things.  See Barrow Cadbury Trust -.  Where I also saw Anna Southall, Interim Chair of the Big Lottery Fund and Merlin Waterson, ex Regional Director of the National Trust’s Eastern of England Region.  Sara and I mostly spoke of the formation, encouragement, promotion, direction and financing of social enterprise: the better to build social capital.  And of  the Ethical Property Company, Social Stock Exchange, Social Finance, London Rebuilding Society, School for Social Entrepreneurs, Investing for Good and Coin Street Community Builders.

Meetings with CASA – reviewing Oliver O’Brien’s work on the Boris Bikes.Dock Monitor – Keeping an Eye on Boris Bike Docks | Suprageography, The Mapping London Blog,London Barclays Cycle Hire Map. And Laura Fewkes from TfL – who works on the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme | Transport for London | Interractive Map.

On other things – we’ve been commissioned to help Norfolk, Ipswich, Colchester, Derby and Durham look at different futures for their museum and largely services. First meeting with the Derby Council Officers on Friday – looking at a very exciting Engineering focused future for the old industrial museum.

I’m also helping Jersey Heritage with investment planning and The Royal Collection with interpretation development – Windsor Castle.

And for an interesting discussion on the future of collecting and the nature of the material record: The end of material culture collecting – it’s here! | LinkedIn – I started this a few months ago and it’s attracted some interesting comments…

Also speaking with Jeremy Wood about Sense & the City - http://www.jeremywood.net/

We’ve started working on the business planning and options appraisal for Norfolk Colchester and Ipswich museums.  To kick this off I visited the Museum of East Anglian Life, run by the Porsche driving Tony Butler.  Not part of the project but gaining profile.  Interesting place and an interesting museum director.  Head for Stowmarket and follow the signs to ASDA. Really good mix of the social, practical and financial.  All wrapped up in a social enterprise parcel. Reminded me of running Quarry Bank Mill in the old days.

Thence to Thetford – the Ancient House Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service – Ancient House and finally to Gressenhall Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service – Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse.  A quiet day – the 29th of April – with most of the country gathered round TV and computer screens watching a wedding.

Monday – Cornwall presenting the Stage E exhibition designs and the audio visual show to to the new Board @ Heartlands.

Tuesday & Wednesday – more Sense & the City.  Some rather beautiful visualisations coming through from the guys at CASA:

by Jon Reades, CASA

This is the Tube system at different times of the day showing the busiest stations.  Work in progress. See also: Simulacra, where there’s a slide show. And Visualising Public Transport Networks » Simulacra – which is Joan Serraas’ work and London Barclays Cycle Hire Map also Brilliant Boris Bikes Animation.  Not forgetting Tweet-o-Meter – Giving you an insight into Twitter activity from around the world!. And see the interview with Andy Hudson Smith here - JISC Inform / Issue 30 / Five minute interview | #jiscinform

Monday – breakfast with Vivienne Long Ferguson who organises the RSA work in the NW, Yorkshire and the Midlands.  The formation of social enterprises, philanthropy, Fellowship, the role of the Fellows and how they we might better be organised were the topics.  All at the not very busy but with-free-wi-fi Mint Hotel opposite Manchester Piccadilly station.  Also talking with her about my social capital powerhouse – AKA Wilmslow Running Club.  We’ve just organised the Half Marathon – 600 volunteers, 15 local groups and clubs, including the Rugby Club, £100k raised for various charities, 4,500 runners…. the big society in action, you could say – though it pre dates the Big Society by a couple of decades. See What is a Runner? : Stephen Feber.

And on making a difference generally by linking thought and action –  having participated in and run numerous thinking groups I believe the best is to have a small team of up to 12 thoughtful and well connected people, who, with active facilitation, can explore topics – in an action focused process. I just such a process recently for the Imperial War Museum’s five national sites (three strategy and development workshops – 2 days x 3 with a month between for digestion and action planning) and I am about to use it to re-plan an island… The RSA lacks these techniques in its thinking armoury and this should / could  be corrected.

For the RSA see: RSA – Rethinking cultural philanthropy & RSA – Portico Network and Philanthropy & RSA – Connected Communities.

Thence to the Hive to see the Arts Council North West, seeing Bronac Ferran from the RCA, where I am Creative Adviser for IDE, Debbi Lander, Creative Programmer for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad in the North West, Maxine Glancy and Brendan Crowther from BBC R&D.  Discussing links between the Cultural Olympiad, the BBC and the RCA.  Talking about the memory project we’re cooking up at the RCA.  Some cool student projects from the 3 day workshop I ran last December at the RCA with the BBC. The bigger game here is a bid to the AHRC for the Knowledge Exchanges.

Wednesday to take tea with Drew who is Future Everything at Teacup and Cakes in Manchester’s Northern Quarter.  Just as I said to Vivs Long Ferguson the NW seemed to be over for me it is bubbling up.  Must be the warm weather fructifying ideas in minds. Or it’s me waking up the the North, again. Talking with Drew about the re-sensing London project, Sense & the City for London Transport Museum, for which I’m Exec. Curator – see Urban.

Wednesday also learned we (with Winckworth Sherwood) have been commissioned to undertake an Options Appraisal for Derby City Museums.  Which makes, with Norfolk, Colchester and Ipswich, 3 museum services and therefore 20 sites or venues we’re looking at.  As ever the primary challenge is the financial one. This includes two castles, a farm, a former fish smokery, an Elizabethan House, the first modern factory site (1722) in the UK, 2 million objects…..

Thursday – breakfast back at the RSA with Kim van Niekerk’s Profit with Purpose group. Profit with Purpose – RSA Fellowship Social Network.

And Friday dinner with Niki Siropoulou, David Hayden, CEO at CloudTalk and John Linney CMO at CloudTalk.  TED is the connection – Niki is organising a TEDx for Greece for October.  And because disruption is good (up to a point) we had fun re-thinking the event.  As ever it’s hard to pin down who exactly said what first but the general direction of travel was towards examining three Frames:

• Time – the dimension of Long Nowness – asking the question – how would you act now if your perspective – your connection with cause-effect-cause-effect was 1 year, 10 years, 100 years?
• Action contracts – borrowing, lending, stealing – thinking of money, resources etc.
• The eco-system for innovation – how money, ideas, trust come together – do you need to be in silicon valley?

Why think about this at all?  Niki has the interesting question – what is the future for Greece?  Is it – borrow less, fix corruption but just carry on doing what we were doing but more cautiously?  Or is it more profound?  Is this a point to re-examine the nature of wealth and value creation on the island?

Having just been asked to help Jersey – part of the UK – but off the coast of France, masterplan its historical interpretation, having recently come back from a trip to Ireland and previously having worked on two projects in Malta – I’m getting that island feeling.  Maybe because I live on one most of the time.  Also slightly getting a castle feeling, having been asked to help the Royal Collections Trust with ‘transforming the quality of a visit to Windsor Castle…’.  Because both Ipswich and Norwich both have castles. Jersey has two – that’s five in all.  Although this is of no significance whatsoever it still feels slightly cool.