CHArt

Computers and the History of Art - 1998 Conference Paper Abstract

Anna Salaman
Going Graphic: An Educational Event at the V&A

This paper explores the educational benefits for visitors who participated in the fifteen-day event Going Graphic at the V&A. A first of its kind, Going Graphic enabled three and a half thousand visitors to borrow digital cameras, to take photographs of the museum's collection, and to download the images on to a computer. They spent the next twenty minutes manipulating their chosen images to create a poster on the theme of The V&A: A Place for People. Visitors received a colour print-out of their work, and their posters were displayed on the V&A website for twenty- four hours. Anyone could take part on a drop-in basis, free of charge. The paper examines the success of the event on three levels:

1. how the educational aims were achieved by allowing visitors to participated in the world of graphic design;
2. how the project demystified developing technology - digital cameras, computers, graphic editing software, and the World Wide Web, all within the museum environment;
3. how the event was compelling enough for a significant number of visitors of all ages to want to create a work of art, and how through doing so, visitors thought about and interacted creatively with the Museum's collection to gain new and enjoyable insights of the objects on display.

Visitors were pleased that they could take home something they themselves had created, and that their posters would appear on the Internet. The most important outcome was the work created by the visitors, some of which forms part of this paper. Posters of high quality, some of which reveal visitors' attitudes towards the Museum and its collections, can be used by the Museum to its benefit. Other potential benefits are also discussed in the paper.

CHArt 98 Abstracts