Behind the Scenes at the British Museum

Continuing our series on South London People, East Dulwich resident Steve Slack shares some secrets from Behind the Scenes at the British Museum.

I work in central London which can be rather hectic at times so I take great pleasure in the almost village-like feel of East Dulwich, where I’ve lived for the last seven years. I don’t want to live in the countryside again yet (where I grew up) and I still enjoy the busy city life and all the fabulous opportunities London has. That’s why East Dulwich is so perfect for me right now – it’s the right balance of hectic London and a quieter life.The bars and shops on Lordship Lane are great. And there is so many places to eat there I’m often spoiled for choice! I enjoy using the local parks either at Peckham Rye or Dulwich. And I’m often to be found at Dulwich Picture Gallery – where I’m a volunteer for the Friends of the Gallery – or the Horniman Museum at Forest Hill.

My day job is at the British Museum, where I work on the development of new exhibitions and galleries. It’s my job to make the content as understandable and accessible for the audience as possible. We call it Interpretation. So I’m involved from the very early stages of a project, thinking about which audiences we are intending to target and then guiding project teams through the process of creating an intellectual structure for a show.

There has been a lot of research into how the people learn when they are in museums, and I contribute to this body of knowledge by testing out our ideas on the public and gauging their reaction. We’re learning a lot about how people take in information and how they like it best laid out – lots of thinking about different kinds of objects, layers of information and how we use text, sound, design, lighting, video, mobile phones or MP3 players to help get our message across to the visitors. I suppose I’m the audience advocate in the exhibition making process. At the end of this long process I am also the creative editor, so trawl through the text, checking it’s all understandable and correcting all the commas and apostrophes.

The final stages of putting an exhibition together are the most fun, but also very hectic. I’m currently putting the finishing touches to an exhibition we are having this summer called Hadrian: Empire and Conflict. It’s going to be a beautiful show, with some amazing objects coming in from museums across Europe, many of which have never been put together like this before. The show will be in the Reading Room, in the centre of the Museum, where the First Emperor has been on display for the last six months.

Hadrian’s a fascinating guy and I’ve very much enjoyed learning about his accomplishments and often turbulent life – there’s much more to him than just Hadrian’s Wall. And the exhibition has many parallels with today’s world – governments are building walls to keep people in and people out all over the place. Hadrian’s first act as emperor was to withdraw his troops from a battle didn’t think was worth continued investment in Mesopotamia – modern Iraq. And who knew he was gay and had a high-profile relationship with another man?

That’s why I love working in museums. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in some top class museums with amazing people and wonderful objects and I’ve picked up so many facts and figures along the way and a great deal of contextual information. From East German newspapers to contemporary Japanese craft work. From the history of Leyton Orient to the coins of the Byzantine Empire and Egyptian gods. And now a Roman emperor. It all comes in handy when we’re doing the pub quiz in the Magdala on Lordship Lane – it’s on Sunday evenings and I maintain it’s the best pub quiz in London.