The month of July saw a marked increase in the amount of rock and roll antics and drum solos here in the museum in keeping with our current exhibition, Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop. But thanks to the skills and support of a fantastic artistic team from Impact Arts, there were certainly no diva moments!
Over a period of four weeks, National Museums Scotland hosted Cashback to the Future in our Learning Centre. This free youth-led summer programme gives young people aged 12-19 the chance to work with professional artists, musicians, film makers and actors, as they explore their creative capabilities and take inspiration from our museum.
Thanks to additional funding from National Museums Scotland, as well as the Heritage Lottery Fund‘s Young Roots and Kick the Dust funds, this year’s Cashback to the Future was bigger and better; running simultaneously across five locations in the Central Belt and culminating in a showcase at Paisley Abbey. These 200 young people from across Scotland also visited Rip It Up, most of whom had not been to the museum before.
The final week of the programme saw an audience of 170 people come to the museum to see what the young people had been busy creating, including:
- The Full Scottish Breakfast Club – The theatre group’s droll Scottish take on the American classic
- WHY – A powerful collaborative artwork created by the visual arts group, which offered a poignant snapshot into what the participants were thinking throughout the day
- Being Young – A beautiful animation collage with original music
- The music group’s reworking of Rhythm is a Dancer, which single-handily resurrected the dance classic by Snap! from 1992 (long before most of the participants were born…)
As always, it was brilliant to see how the group responded creatively to our collections and the museum environment. The sight of the young people waiting for the museum doors to open at 10am so they could run to their workshops will keep me smiling for a good while yet.
