The opening of Catch Your Breath on 23 November 2018 coincided with Kids in Museums Takeover Day. Takeover Day is a celebration of children and young people’s contributions to museums, galleries, arts organisations, archives and heritage sites. Children are given meaningful roles, working alongside staff and volunteers to participate in the life of the museum.
We invited pupils from Coxhoe Primary School to take on the role of tour guide and make a video describing and demonstrating their favourite parts of the exhibition. You can watch their video here and on YouTube.
They chose to showcase four different exhibits. First on the video is the selection of old inhalers including ‘Sir Hiram Maxim’s Pipe of Peace’ (on loan from the Science Museum). The children were grabbed by the fact the inventor is better known for his far less peaceful machine gun.
Next you’ll see Helen Collard’s ‘Ohmerometer II’. This is an original interactive artwork commissioned for Catch Your Breath which allows the visitor to use their breath to create a sound and light show.
‘Measure Your Breath’ challenges visitors to hum for as long as possible using just one breath. As you’ll see from the video the children got quite competitive, but none came close to the astonishing world record of 1min 52sec.
Finally our tour guides explain ‘Sleep Songs’ another original art commission by Miriam Quick and Stefanie Posavec which turns data from Spire breath trackers into visual art and music.
Thank you so much to our tour guides. We think they did an absolutely amazing job! Also thanks to the teachers from Coxhoe Primary School for allowing the children to take part and for being so encouraging.
You can see all these exhibits for yourself in the exhibition at Palace Green Library. It’s open every day 10am-5pm until 17 March 2019 (check here for Christmas and New Year closures).
