Selection day

On Saturday 25th July the Research Forum gathered to agree the initial tranche of works to pursue with lenders/artists for the exhibition. Over the past 6 months, through discussions and thematic sessions, we had accumulated nearly 300 suggestions.

To get the selection process going, we started by voting for 'must have' works in terms of different themes. We then looked at what the exhibition might look like if filtered by sections of the poem, and also through the lens of art history. We used coloured stickers to mark choices.

As different people's suggestions built up, a core to the exhibition started to emerge. Here are some of the works that people felt were important.

Up until this point works had just been proposed by individual members so it was great to see evidence of how works resonated across the group as a whole; which works people really liked and which felt more peripheral.

In the afternoon, we cross checked our thinking by parking overarching categories/ themes and letting individual works themselves (and links between them) lead our thinking. Working in small groups we started to make connections and pathways between works, grouping works together and formulating ideas about the journey from one work to another.

Photo credits: Jenni Deakin