Email Lady Lumley's School, Pickering:

Heres what i sent to achaddock@ladylumleys.net CC. pmcgrath@ladylumleys.net, my previous art teachers, i have missed out a few irrelevant paragraphs, so the start probably wont make sense :D

// We have been given a project where we have had to congregate into a groups of 4, then working with the Plymouth City Museum & Art Galley curate an exhibition. As curators, we will completely independently manage the exhibition, selecting artists works, writing about it, deciding how it will be presented, where it will be presented, financing it, promoting, criticising it etc. However we will never actually follow it through, this exercise is purely planning, but approaching it in a very serious way. Our final deadline for presentation is the 15th December, we must have explored every angle for pursuing this task, even down to obtaining a 'health and safety' document from the museum.


Our group have decided on curating an exhibition based on the Mexican yearly Aztec festival "Day of the Dead" where families who have lost loved ones will celebrate there memories by creating vast shrines and altars, decorating them with colourful creations, significantly edible sculls with the names of their losses inscribed. A day well practiced by Catholics, dating back to pre-Hispanic times, although still popular in Mexican culture.


Due to the interest and history of this festival, we feel it is a great starting point for our exhibition, as there will be a mixed variety of responses. We plan to contact a range of different organisations, culturally spread out for different responses to the event, be that verbally, or physically. This will help us explore critically the many different aspects to curating, it will be included in our research and may be exhibited.


These are early stages in our investigation and planning stage, however we were thinking of ways to accumulate responses to the 'Day of the Dead'. One route we have began to question is a how a child would think of this ritual, we therefore have planned to produce some basic questionnaires helping us understand what people think of death. Also one idea was to produce some activity sheets for a young group to participate with. Most likely guiding them on how to make some of the attractive memoirs and beautiful displays that the Mexicans produce, this will hopefully educate them about this amazing culture and hopefully they would get some enjoyment out of learning.


We were wondering, if there would be a possibility of you both being able to in some way combine this into one of your younger classes, we can appreciate that this is a large request, and im sure you have specific schedules for your students. We would ultimately like a class to produce a credited piece of work that will relate to our topic, providing you have the time and approve of our request. We are still in our planning stage and i appreciate that this may come across rather motley, however i thought i would await your response before 'jumping the gun'.


Many Thanks


William Danby


Plymouth College of Art and Design