Christmas Light Festival

How a handbag brings us together

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Oxford’s Christmas Light Festival is here — hooray! 

It’s wonderful to have an event that draws Oxford’s array of communities together, especially in these difficult times.

And this year, Multaka volunteers are teaming up with the History of Science Museum (HSM) to create our first ever live-streamed, festival family event. 

The activities will take inspiration from one of the star objects in our new exhibition of Islamic metalwork, the 600-year-old Mosul Handbag.  And during the event, we will be celebrating diversity in faith, music, food, and art. 

600-year-old Mosul Handbag from The Courtauld, on display as part of the Precious and Rare: Islamic Metalwork from The Courtauld exhibition

Multaka and the HSM team have been exploring a new way to meet up with our three Multaka volunteers through the pandemic to discuss, organise, and design our activities for Christmas light festival. We have been meeting online every two weeks to exchange ideas and skills, and we want to share this healthy platform for discussion to our online visitors.

Rana Ibrahim — Multaka volunteer and HSM’s Multaka Collections Officer — with a craft bag inspired by The Courtauld’s Mosul Handbag

Jenan, one of our Multaka volunteers, told us:

‘It gives me great pleasure to participate in ​this event based on the Musel historical bag ​at the History of Science Museum in Oxford ​because I love its beauty and magnificent effect. Moreover Al-Musel city with its ancient civilization is the city of my mother back home; that makes me very thrilled and honoured.’

Alison, also one of our Multaka volunteers, added:

“I have enjoyed the Multaka lights festival project as a route to discovering other cultures, meeting new people, and learning about the Arabic language.  I have been exploring some of the designs from objects in the ‘Precious and Rare’ exhibition online, and inventing ways to recreate them at home.  I will demonstrate some ideas to add sparkle and shine to your Mosul bag during the online event.“

Get ready to craft!

Helen, who is a learning officer at the Museum, told me that one of the things that she has really enjoyed is the way that we have all been learning together.  

”All too often the name of the city of Mosul is mentioned in this country in the context of war, so it’s been wonderful finding out about the city’s rich culture and history. One of my favourite activities was when we were talking about the Mosul handbag and decided spontaneously to show our own favourite handbags to each other on Zoom. That led to the sharing of some really lovely stories.”  

So come and join our brilliant Multaka team with your family for some fun activities on Friday 20th November from 4.30-5.30pm.

Get ready to download a template to make your own handbag, learn some Arabic and try your hand at Calligraphy.

Book your place on our website.

Al Salam Al- aykum!

Illuminating objects

Sketch

By Hannah Eastwood

Last Friday evening saw many of Oxford’s cultural venues, including the University museums, hosting late-night events to celebrate the city’s annual Christmas Light Festival. One of the standout contributions to the evening was work completed by local primary school children along with the museums’ six HLF Skills for the Future trainees.

The aim of the project was to build six lanterns, one to represent each of the Oxford museums and collections – the Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers Museum, Museum of Natural History, Museum of the History of Science, Museum of Oxford, and the Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum. The finished lanterns were to go on display as part of the Light Festival on Friday 21 November.

Fire clock

Dragon fire clock (inv. 46586)

As one of the HLF trainees working on this project, I wanted to share our experience of conceiving, developing and building these wonderful lanterns. A group of six children from each school came to visit the museums to select their favourite object from a set prepared by each HLF trainee. The selected object would be the inspiration for the final lantern. For the Museum of the History of Science the chosen object was the beautifully striking dragon fire clock above.

Pupils work on their lantern constructions

Pupils work on their lantern constructions

The real hard work began when we visited the schools to start the construction of the lanterns. We all had very limited experience working with willow, but our lead artist Nikki Gunson thankfully has a lot more experience creating fantastic willow lanterns. Nikki was able to draw up plans for our museums’ selected objects and it was our task to devise a session plan from these designs and to divide up the work for each child.

In my group, we worked with around 15 children at a time, swapping groups so that each child could create a section of the dragon that they would be able to identify as their own once it was finished. The children loved working with the willow and especially enjoyed the more complicated tasks such as sawing the bamboo and creating complex shapes from the design.

Due to the complexity of the design we didn’t manage to cover the willow structure with the paper and glue; this work was completed by a team later where finishing touches and messy glue was applied. It’s a difficult process, where pieces of paper are covered in waterproof PVA glue and then laid on to the willow. The paper needed to be kept taut so not to lose the shape of the dragon underneath.

Building the frames

Building the frames

Nikki Gunson then worked her magic on the completed lanterns: a fancy lick of paint and they were ready for public display on the lawn outside the Museum of Natural History!

Finished lanterns

The finished lantern outside the Museum of Natural History

The six schools taking part in the lantern project were Bayard’s Hill (Museum of Natural History), Wood Farm (Museum of the History of Science), John Henry Newman (Botanic Garden), Rose Hill (Museum of Oxford), Blackbird Academy Trust (Pitt Rivers Museum), and Cutteslowe (Ashmolean).