New Archive Art Project – Strong Rooms
- 15th April 2016
Guided tour of archive strong rooms, which gave the project its title, and areas usually off limits
We are working with Archives West Midlands and Arts Connect to deliver a revolutionary new project which fuses archives and installation art.
The project is called Strong Rooms, and the contribution of WAAS has been instrumental from the start. As well as staff being involved in carrying out community work for the project, Worcester will be one of only four venues to host the final installation.
Working with globally renowned street artist Mohammed Ali, Archives West Midlands inspires young people to use archives for the first time to consider their locality and record their discoveries creatively.
Mohammed envisages creating an immersive sensory experience, allowing young people to explore the archives and form their own thoughts about accessing the stories of the past.
Mohammed said: “telling stories in exciting and innovative ways that resonate with new people is what excites me: throwing light onto our past and making it relevant to our future.”
This journey will create Strong Rooms: a vivid and interactive installation delivering high quality artistic engagement to local communities, challenging conventional perceptions of archives and helping the sector to engage with young people in new ways.
Strong Rooms will tour the Midlands, stopping at Rugby, Coventry, Dudley as well at here in Worcester.
Art workshop inspired by calligraphy and lettering from documents in the archives
The Strong Rooms project lead is our Community Project Officer Justin Hughes, who added: “the opportunity to take archives out to the very heart of communities in new and dynamic ways is hugely exciting. We have a wealth of archive resources in the 12 miles of shelving. We’ve enjoyed helping people discover the stories within them over the years, and we’re really looking forward to working with artists and local people to see how the stories will inspire them”.
We’ll keep you updates via the blog, Facebook and Twitter about how it is going and what we get up to, as well as when you can come and see the installation in Worcester.
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