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After I posted the news that Discovery Museum in Newcastle is holding an event for children to learn how to modify clothing in a steampunk style, the PR department of the museum got in touch to inform me of other events that are coming this year too. I’ve listed them below and hopefully you may be able to get to one or two.
Please note: These are not in date order.
Discovery Museum events:
Cog Creations and Steampunk Automata
Drop-in craft session, make your own steampunk creation!
Dates
Visitor Information
Time
11am – 3pm
Drop-in session
Price
Paper crafts – free
Metal crafts – £2 per person
About
Join us for this drop-in craft session to create your own paper automaton creation or craft your own keyring or steampunk wearables using cogs, metals, bolts, screws, cotton and wool.
Why not pop into the Discovery Museum’s Fabricating Histories exhibition for some inspiration from 19th century inventors such as Brunel, Lovelace and Babbage?
This event is part of Play + Invent, Discovery Museum’s new family programme for budding inventors, designers and makers!For more information visit: www.discoverymuseum.org.uk/play-invent
Fabricating Histories: An Alternative 19th Century
An exhibition celebrating an almost, might-have-been world
Dates
Until Sunday 21 May
Visitor Information
Times
Weekdays 10am – 4pm
Weekends 11am – 4pm
Price
Free entry, donations welcome
About
The story of our 19th century inventors and pioneers is all around us, but with so many experiments, ideas and notions jostling for position, history could have lurched off on a tangent at any moment and become very different.
What if Brunel had graced Sunderland with a vast suspension bridge, or Lovelace & Babbage had computerised the 1840s? What if steam-powered airships had really taken off?
From the northern engineers behind the age of steam to the New Victorians, Fabricating Histories turns history on its head and takes a closer look at the raggedy edges, broken ends, loops and knots, the alternative threads of history that might have been.
Five artists and designers – Dr Geof, Nick Simpson, Larysa Kucak, Phil Sayers and Charlotte Cory – visited the museum archives and have produced new work which reinterprets pieces from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums collections. Dr Geof has redesigned Turbinia as if powered by the Lambton Worm, whilst Larysa Kucak has designed a corset based on a nineteenth-century parasol. Phil Sayers is looking at and rethinking Ada Lovelace as a woman in science, and Charlotte Cory has been reworking celebrated North East painter John Martin.
This exhibition celebrates the almost, might-have-been world, of Fabricating Histories!
This exhibition is a collaboration between Northumbria University, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums and five artists, kindly supported by Arts Council England.
Share your thoughts using #fabricatinghistories
Fabricating Histories: Curators Talk & Artist Demo
With curator Dr. Claire Nally and artist Dr. Geof
Dates
Visitor Information
Time
1.30pm – 2.30pm
Price
Free, no booking required
Suitable for all ages
About
Join curator Dr. Claire Nally and artist Dr. Geof as they illuminate the topic of ‘steampunk’ narratives’, and explore the almost, might-have-been world of Fabricating Histories.
Dr Geof will also be completing a live artist demo. Be sure to drop in before the talk to have your likeness drawn by Dr. Geof himself!
Sydney Padua – Meet the Author
Sydney will be telling the story of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage
Dates
Visitor Information
About
Sydney will be telling the story of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, two fascinating and brilliant eccentrics, and will also be discussing her process of primary-source research and creative transformation.
One hundred years before the first computers were built out of wires and vacuum tubes, the Victorian polymath Charles Babbage designed a gigantic steam-powered, punchcard-programmed, cogwheel computer, the Analytical Engine. His friend Ada, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, completed some of the first programs for the machine, and theorised that one day it could be used for the manipulation of any kind of information.Unfortunately Ada died young and Babbage never built his Engine, leaving their story as one of the greatest what-ifs in the history of science.
Sydney Padua’s cult webcomic The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage,now a bestselling graphic novel, combines extensive research with alternate-universe comic-book escapes, where the mechanical computer is finally completed and used to build runaway economic models, defeat spelling errors,and of course, fight crime.
She will also display her 3-d animations of how the Analytical Engine would have looked and operated, some of the first visualisations ever created of that extraordinary machine.
Sydney Padua is an Eisner-award nominated cartoonist and visual effects artist whose animation appears in The Iron Giant, Clash of the Titans,and The Jungle Book. Her work on Lovelace and Babbage has been featured in Wired and The Economist and she has spoken at Microsoft, Google, the BBC, and the Computer History Muse
This event is part of the Fabricating History exhibition programme.
Steampunk: A Role Playing Experience
Create your own character and role play through an adventure of mythic proportions…
Dates
Visitor Information
About
Enter a world of H.P. Lovecraft-esque horror, set in a reimagined Victorian Newcastle, inspired by the Fabricating Histories exhibition at Discovery Museum. Create your own character and role play through an adventure of mythic proportions, inspired by traditional role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.
All are welcome at this fun, friendly and accessible workshop session – no role-playing game experience necessary!
All materials provided.
Part of Discovery Museum Adult Learning Programme
Steampunk Comic Book Day
Create your own steampunk-themed comic book in this full-day workshop.
Dates
Visitor Information
About
In this full-day workshop, create your own steampunk-themed comic book. You’ll drawing inspiration from the Fabricating Histories exhibition at Discovery Museum and exploring some of the greatest steampunk graphic novels ever made, from Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta through Kevin J. Anderson’s Clockwork Angels to Lovelace & Babbage by Sidney Padua.
Why not pop into the Discovery Museum’s Fabricating Histories exhibition for some inspiration from 19th century inventors such as Brunel, Lovelace and Babbage?
All materials provided.
Part of Discovery Museum Adult Learning Programme
Finally, not steampunk, but linked to the 19th century and still interesting is this:
Talk: The Spark of Life: Frankenstein and Electricity
Join historian Jo Bath for this exciting lunchtime history talk…
Dates
Visitor Information
Time
1pm – 1.45pm
Price
£4, booking essential
Suitable for all ages
Students free (booking and student ID required)
Book tickets
About
Why did Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein harness electricity to create his monster? This exploration of the early nineteenth century obsession with electricity as a force of life takes in frog’s legs, executed criminals, the Anatomy Act, steam intellect societies, the Chair of Dr De Sanctis, a spontaneously generated mite and more.
Join historian Jo Bath for this exciting lunchtime history talk inspired by the Fabricating Histories exhibition at Discovery Museum.
Part of Discovery Museum Adult Learning Programme
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