Museum Tales 4

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Another year and another publication for the ‘Writing at the Museum’ course run by Creative Future.

This is the forth pamphlet in the series, showing how Brighton Museum & Art Gallery continues to inspire our writers, and how every object (or painting) has its story. This publication contains a selection of work from the two courses held during 2016-2017. Writers featured in earlier Museum Tales publications are seen here again, along with new writers such as Luc(e) Raesmith, Kathleen Weigelt, Maxine Toff, Niall Drennan, James Kerr and Paul Tschinder. Participants were inspired by paintings, furniture, African fashion, punk outfits, and the many eclectic pieces in the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery collections.

Luc(e), inspired by the flower paintings in the permanent collection, writes on modern-day consumerism in his ‘Haikus for a High Street.’

Niall, in his poem ‘War, Claudia’, makes a strong emotional point about war.

Kathleen’s piece ‘Beep, Beep’ tackles female genital mutilation through a poem about a glamorous African woman.

This is a strong, and at times political, emotional and entertaining collection of writing, reflecting the divisive and diverse times we live in. As always, we greatly enjoyed reading this publication’s submissions, just as much as the participants loved writing them. We hope you will enjoy reading them and will see museum artefacts in a new life as a result – and, who knows, they may even inspire you to write.

Read them all online here,

Celia Goth – Dress Code

James Kerr – Bouquet

Jasmine Sharif – Portrait of Mrs  Betsey Chatfield

Kathleen Weigelt – Beep, Beep

Luc Raesmith – Haikus for a High Street

Maxine Toff – The Angel

Miriam Beza – Punk

Moray Sanders – The Nymph

Niall Drennan – War Claudia

Paul Tschinder – African Mannequin

Tony Spiers – Pot Oiseau

Vicky Darling – The Rebellious Octogenarian

Dominique De-Light, Director, Creative Future

Creative Future is a charity that provides training, mentoring and national showcasing opportunities, including the Creative Future Literary Awards and the Tight Modern to talented people who lack opportunities due to mental health issues, disability, health, identity or social circumstance. For more information see www.creativefuture.org.uk