Botticelli in Cambridge Creative Producers

The Creative Producers is a participatory research project that brings together local young adults, researchers, artists, and staff at The Fitzwilliam Museum. Taking the display National Treasures: Botticelli in Cambridge as its impetus, the project uses arts, creativity, and dialogue to explore how young adults experience fine art and the Museum in their daily lives, and find ways for the Museum to serve them better.

The Creative Producers went behind the scenes of the Botticelli display and took part in a series of creative and discussion workshops. Through the workshops, they put together Get the Gossip, an interactive trail of creative activities for visitors to explore in the display. They then hosted a launch event for the trail at The Fitzwilliam, during which they invited other young adults to connect with the art on their own terms in fun, creative ways.

The Creative Producers was convened as part of Molly Stock-Duerdoth’s practice-based PhD study, supervised by Dr Kate Noble at The Fitzwilliam Museum and Professor Sandra Dudley and Dr Nuala Morse at The University of Leicester. It sought to answer the research questions:

• How do young adults make meaning through participating in and engaging with a university museum over time? What qualities does the meaning they make have?
• What does understanding the museum as an affective assemblage illuminate about how young adults make meaning in this context?
• How can an understanding of how young adults make meaning, and the form of meaning they make, in the assembled museum inform participatory practice and research going forward?

• Blog post
• Case study
• PhD thesis 

The Creative Producers: Aino Sinioja, Alexander Payton, Chloe Coles-Smith, Christopher Joseph, Elena Ooijman, Louise Nichols, Martha Wallace, Rose Dolan, Sara Williamson Balaguer, Sophie Smout, Yasmin Brem-Shepphard.

Molly Stock-Duerdoth, PhD Student and project lead

Kate Noble, Senior Research Associate Museum Learning

Holly Morrison, Learning Associate (Schools and Families)

Kaitlin Ferguson, Artist