Art Explora’s Mobile Museum arrives in Grange Park tomorrow, showcasing parts of the Government Art Collection and delivering a programme of hands-on workshops for local families who may otherwise struggle to access the arts.
Grange Park isn’t often seen as a destination for the arts. But tomorrow a purpose-built Mobile Museum – MuMo – will be rolling in to @TheGrange community centre showcasing artwork from the likes of JMW Turner, Paul Nash and Bridget Riley, and inviting local families to make masterpieces of their own.
Brought to Grange Park by Art Explorer, the purpose-built gallery is one of a small fleet of trucks that’s been touring communities in France for over 15 years and has now made its way to the UK. Hydraulic pods pop out to extend the space into a full wood-lined gallery built to museum specification.
On board for this leg of the tour is Shaped by the Sea, an exhibition of British art drawn from the Government Art Collection and usually found hanging in Downing Street and British embassies around the world.
Curated by Dr Laura Popoviciu, the show traces our relationship with the sea from 18th-century harbour scenes and JMW Turner’s stormy shipwrecks, through to contemporary work by Turner Prize winner Lubaina Himid, Zineb Sedira – who represented France at the 2022 Venice Biennale – and Evewright – the British-Jamaican multidisciplinary artist known for his large-scale coastal walking drawings. Together, the works explore how exploration, trade, migration and empire have informed British identity.
Other artist shown include Bridget Riley, the pioneering Op Art painter, and fellow abstract artist Tess Jaray, both responding to coastal light, while Turner Prize nominee Anya Gallaccio and Royal Academician Emma Stibbon bring more recent work addressing climate change.
Alongside the exhibition, trained facilitators will be running free creative workshops for children and families, with the chance to make and take away their own artwork inspired by what’s on board and our own coastline.
In the morning, from 10am-1pm sessions will be focused on engaging with children from @TheGrange’s holiday club, coinciding with their end of summer party, then open to the public 2-5pm.
Art Explora has partnered with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Government Art Collection to bring MuMo to areas with high deprivation and low cultural engagement rather than the cities that already have galleries on their doorstep. This summer’s tour – running from Plymouth up through the South West and North West to Blackpool, Burnley and Darwen – is a pilot for the programme, using an existing museum truck borrowed from France ahead of the UK’s own version going into production.
Grange Park is a fitting stop for MuMo, having also been earmarked for a £20m share of the government’s Pride in Place investment. Art Explora has worked with the Pride in Place community board to bring the museum here – putting a genuinely national collection somewhere it wouldn’t otherwise reach, for an audience it was built to find.
Art Explora’s Mobile Museum is @TheGrange, Blackpool, on Tuesday 25 August and open to the general public from 2–5pm. Entry is free and open to all – just turn up, though booking is advised via Eventbrite. Under-12s must be accompanied by an adult.
