Thegalleryistalking recruitment presentation

After last weeks 'sorry im late presentation' i'm worrying that i haven't put any useful information in thegalleryistalking presentation at all. But hopefully everyone got enough out of the presentation to e-mail me if they are interested. I'm still worried theough.
The presentation did go well- Mo told the first year's before thier lecture this evening that they should all come along because it is a brilliant project, which drew in about 30 students, and i got a couple of questions at the end. It looks promising that a couple of people will e-mail to be part of the project:, I suppose a lot is dependant on this though:

"The Gallery is Talking is a collaborative project that was set up last year between Tate Britain and Stage 2 of the BA Fine Art course at Chelsea

Established to increase accessibility of the existing in-gallery text for people with dyslexia to refresh resources at  The Tate Britain, the project soon engaged with wider issues related to art and communication and the very way we experienced and looked at the gallery.

During this first year we discussed at length what actually makes a text accessible and engaging, and if text is in fact the best way to reach out to museum visitors. The participating students devised a series of resources aimed at people who don’t usually rely on text during their visit, but who would like to access the ‘gallery’s voice’ through other media.  After a year we have made a large amount of progress in resources produced.

Last summer, towards the end of the first year of this project additional students were recruited to the project by the course, this included Stage one students with the hope of developing the project this year.

As the remaining participants from this group we would now like to expand on and evaluate our ideas further. This, we believe would be done best opening up the project to other disciplines and students, to maintain it fresh and relevant with some new members, fresh ideas and a new outlook.

Now I am going to briefly talk about the work we have been doing and our progress so far.

The Map concept is something that took a lead within the paper resources made during the year. It was keenly worked upon because of the problems that the group felt the existing normal Tate map contained. Small things like stairs not being logical to the structure of the gallery, to not having any visual reference to where you are on the map. E.g. ‘Room 15’ does not help us know where we are as much as a landmark such as a stained glass window would.  The actual production of the map was quite complex, It is something that was incredibly difficult to manage and to make, but the success with this resource is that the Tate now wish to trial the map on the main information desks of the gallery. 

The website that has been developed by Sam has become a hub to share our learning and resources and opinions.  It is linked to the Tate Britain website and can be accessed by anyone that goes onto the Tate website through a link. We have already had some interest from a museum asking about our progress due to the originality of the project.

Please take a note of the website: www.thegalleryistalking.org and perhaps you can look in more detail after the meeting has finished about what we have been doing. 

There are also other resources that have been made to expand The Gallery is Talking to its visitors. Chatterboxes were made as a way for people to talk about art in a way that is recognisable and fun. Audio questions was a way of finding opinions about traditional gallery forms i.e. Curatorial statements and text; who writes this and what are they trying to say- talking to people about the gallery within the gallery. Finally, the active forum, a way to produce conversation around all of these subjects I have been speaking about. 

The opening was a way of showing the public what we had been doing with the project, and was a great way for us to get some feedback. It launched the website, introduced our resources as well as giving visitors on the day some ‘only on the day’ events in the site specific environment that was so necessary for the launch.

For example, we had a digital comments board that visitors to the Tate could add to by text messaging, and of course our map making workshops right in the centre of the Tate. 

If you would like to know more details about the project, please send me an e-mail or have a look on the website. Otherwise if you would like to be a part of the project please send me an e-mail with your name and a brief explanation of why you would like to be involved. I’m happy to take any questions you have now, or if you would prefer, I will be staying behind here for about 10 minutes.

Thank you for listening and I hope some of you are interested in taking part.

Any Questions"