Turner Contemporary launches online resource

One year on from Turner Contemporary’s major exhibition Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, which explored the relationship between T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem and the visual arts, the gallery is releasing a specially designed online resource so that other galleries, groups and individuals can learn from the exhibition’s pioneering approach to curating.

The Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ resource includes observations from the Research Group who curated the exhibition, the curatorial methodology, visitor insights, and key content from the exhibition, and is a tool for exhibition makers and individuals interested in a community-focused approach. It was developed by Michele Gregson and Lydia Laitung, and can be accessed for free.

Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ was the culmination of a three year project, based on an idea by Professor Mike Tooby and led by Mike and the project’s dedicated Research Curator Dr Trish Scott. It was designed to radically rethink traditional curatorial processes. Turner Contemporary worked with a voluntary Research Group, made up of local people, to develop the entire exhibition. Ranging from people in their 20s to their 70s, the group brought a diverse range of interests and life experiences to bear on Eliot’s poem.

You don’t come out the other side unchanged. This has changed my life. It’s changed the way I look at things. It’s changed what I want to know about things, how my personal research will go forward. And I’m an age when you think, oh I might be knitting or sitting back taking it easy, but no, I’ve got so much I want to do and that’s why it’s been an absolute privilege to be a part of this, and to have a voice and to think your voice might actually matter. – Melody Bottle, Research Group Member

Read the full announcement about the resource here: turnercontemporary.org

Image: Exterior of the building, Photo: Hufton + Crow.