Category: Travel

Science Gallery London: Engaging Youth

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We spent the better part of the day in the London Bridge area of the city and learned about Science Gallery London from Daniel Glaser (pictured above.)  It is part of the Global Science Gallery Network begun in Dublin in 2008 to engage 15-25 year olds with science.  More specifically to engage them “where art and science collide” through a variety of media—film, theater, immersive and online experiences, art of all types, and the like.  London is the second location for Science Gallery and it will officially open in 2016.  In the meantime, it is in pre-season mode, as it were, before its new home is created.  Set in the shadow of the Shard and just steps from the London Bridge Tube and rail stations, Science Gallery is at a busy crossroads and the ideal spot for attracting an audience.  It is affiliated with King’s College and all of the future Science Gallery locations (goal is to have a global presence of eight of them by 2020) will be based at universities.  But part of their mission is to engage with the entire community and to be a bridge between academe and the city.  Future sites include New York, Bangalore, and Melbourne.  Why not San Francisco, I say?

King's College Guy's Campus
King’s College Guy’s Campus

According to Dan, their enthusiastic and well-qualified director, the plan is to have 3-4 seasons each year around a common theme.  This fall (September and October 2014) is a time of experimentation and a prototype of what is to come.  The SG folks worked with youth in the community as well as with staff and researchers at King’s College to find out what topics and concepts interested them and then have commissioned professional artists and producers to create works.  This is a facilitated approach to content development, but one that gets at what the young people want to know about, not what the adults or program staff think they should.  Dan and his staff did six months of engagement work ahead of any programming.  One novel aspect is that the media team is comprised entirely of youth and led by two sisters, aged 17 and 19, who have 16,000 You Tube subscribers.

Theme for the fall is FREQUENCIES:  Tune into Life and it relates to the sounds of life, to the rhythms and cycles of our body.  Involvement in FREQUENCIES includes:  a juggler interacting with children, a cellist at the cancer center, a DJ with a market trader, looking at the physiology of sleep, and the participation of a hospital porter and a lung pollution expert.  The emphasis in program development is on rapid prototyping with nine collaborators having just one week in which to create a new sound, and a sound that would be open source!

Science Gallery will have no permanent collections and will focus to some extent, but not exclusively, on issues of health and medicine, given its location on the Guy’s campus.  This campus is home to the medical school and Guy’s Hospital.  There will be several pre-seasons prior to the official opening of Science Gallery in 2016. Future themes are likely to be: “Spare Parts” (transplantation), “Teeth,” and in 2016, “Addictive.”  For this last theme, they will do engagement work with addicts, pushers, specialists, and others in order to generate ideas for the works themselves.

Beginning in 2015, the building they are now in will be renovated to include a theater, a wide open gallery-like space, production facilities, and a cafe.  Project cost is 12 million pounds which is a combination of funds from the university, from individual donors, and the Guy’s Hospital charity.  Ongoing operating costs will come from the university budget.

Current home of Science Gallery to be renovated in 2015
Current home of Science Gallery to be renovated in 2015

Students involved in the project were recruited through the Youth Media Agency and are paid for their time.  For those familiar with the California Academy of Sciences, Science Gallery has elements of NightLife, Brilliant!Science, Careers in Science, and Teen Advocates for Science Communication (TASC) with its flash mobs.  One significant difference is that all events are free; some revenue will be realized from the cafe and a shop. The current staff is quite small, around a dozen individuals, plus three working on commission for this season, and the students. Attendance goal for the first year is 350,000.

We had the privilege of attending one of the FREQUENCIES events, a performance by Bishi, a Bengali British musician and singer based in London, which featured images from a lab recording of her sleep patterns juxtaposed with haunting music and singing.  It was different and certainly combined science with art.  It will be informative to watch how Science Gallery London evolves, how they define success and what outcomes they achieve.  And it would be fun to return in 2016 when they are up and fully operational in their new space.

 

London: First Impressions upon Returning

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It’s been about 5 years since I was last in London and now we are back.  My observations on this return:  cell phones are in use everywhere on the street, even more so than New York. Many, many restaurants now have outside seating, cafe style.  On some days that means lap blankets are provided in addition to exterior heaters.

The Tube is cleaner, faster, and even better.  We have not yet had to wait more than a minute or two for a train, and there are ready announcements if there is even the slightest delay (“we are stopped for a red signal and should be moving again in a moment.”)  Many stations have been upgraded and made attractive.  Happily, our Oyster cards of yore still work and we’ve been topping them up frequently!  Mass transit here is expensive which, I guess, is providing the fuel for the upgrades.

British food has gone trendy; the farm to table movement is in evidence on numerous menus–think California and San Francisco, but with a British twist!  We had a small lunch at a hot newish restaurant called The Shed (rustic inside and out like a garden shed) and sampled carrot hummus and lamb chips (as in shaped like fries and fried) with a harissa dipping sauce.  The hummus was tasty and the lamb chips delectable.  Among the more usual offerings on their menu, we nibbled a couple of delicious cheeses. Overall, though, I’m still struck by how much meat is on the menus, probably no more than before, but my response to living midst California’s bounteous produce.

The new double decker buses are very classy looking and still red, thank you.  Lots of construction going on—both new buildings and road works.

Hatchard’s on Piccadilly

Hatchard’s, that bastion of books, was doing a lively business the other day and remains one of my favorite hangouts for all things literary.  It is now owned by Waterstone’s, but retains its genteel character and other than Waterstone’s Kindle covers for sale, you almost wouldn’t know.

There are  branches of Waterstone’s all around the city and a number of other independent bookstores and mini-chains.  Other favorites of mine  include the original Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street and Heywood Hill in Mayfair.  The latter is a cluttered cozy set of two small rooms of both old and new books with a thriving mail order and gift collection business.  On the surface at least, London’s bookselling industry appears to be thriving.

As for what else is new, we stopped in at the gala reception for the opening of the new Sherlock Holmes exhibit.  Quite the bash!

Museum of London exhibit
Museum of London exhibit

And I absolutely love the blue rooster in Trafalgar Square!  It’s unmissable, whimsical and adds an element of informality to this public space.  The title of it is Hahn/Cock and the sculptor is Katharina Fritsch.

 

 

 

Boat Trip on the Sheepscot River

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I’m not a water person, not really. But I do like to look at the water and prefer a house with a water view.  And I go on boats, but quite selectively–on calm waters, with certain friends, not too long in duration, and you get the general idea. Given all of that, I can wholeheartedly recommend the one hour boat trip on the Sheepscot River which leaves from the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden in Boothbay.  First you have to pay to get into the gardens  (or be a member–well worth it and that’s a whole other story!) and then you leave from the new boat dock at the end of the Shoreline Trail.

The boat has an electric motor, seats seven plus the captain and has a canopy which provided some protection from the sun.  Sean Griffith, the captain, is a relaxed and very knowledgeable man who obviously enjoys what he does.  We went out in the afternoon about midway between low and high tides (he thinks low tide is better) and cruised by Sawyer Island, Pratt’s Island and several others on the Sheepscot River which flows up to Wiscasset about 5 miles away by water.  Since the motor is quiet, the captain can speak in a normal tone of voice.  He even cut the motor completely and we just idled every so often.

Bobbing lobster buoy
Bobbing lobster buoy

There were quite a number of seals bobbing their heads up, and we saw a couple of osprey nests, one with two fledglings on it.

These waters are some of the richest in the state for lobsters and besides the colorful lobster buoys, we cruised past the equivalent of a parking lot or garage for empty lobster traps.  A good catch is 500 pounds of lobster a day, a very good and more typical haul for Boothbay lobstermen is 1,000 pounds per day.

There was almost no other boat traffic and so the whole experience was peaceful. Cost of this excursion is $25 per person and well worth it!