What does expressing your unique identity look like in practice for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)?
Well, it probably looks very different almost 11 months into a year-long intensive development programme than it did last September when we first started working with this year’s group of Teenviners — and here are the photos to evidence that!
On Wednesday 1 July, the group hosted their own ‘Museum of Me’ launch event — a collection of individual exhibitions all about them, designed and curated by themselves.
Teenvine Plus partnered with Museum of Me by Extraordinary Us on this project, undertaking weeks of creative work with the young people and culminating in last Wednesday’s showcase for family and friends.
Through the process, the Museum of Me team helped our Teenviners think about how to tell stories about their lives, content curation, production and marketing.
The result was a fabulous set of personalised exhibitions on display for visitors to see. Some even required interactive tasting!
One exhibition visitor wrote: “It was amazing to see all of the showcases. A brilliant group of individuals, unique and special.”
Inside an exhaustive 12-month programme of activities and opportunities tailored around the teenagers’ interests and ambitions — and deeply woven around community connection — the Museum of Me exhibition felt significant as the end of our year together approaches.
Creating an exhibition of “me, now” helped the young people and their families reflect on how far they’ve each come — and crucially, how having greater resilience, growing confidence, blossoming friendships and unfolding ambitions can now fuel a bigger, hopeful future, full of new possibilities.
Museum of Me star Caitlin said: “For my exhibition I wanted it to have my music, poems, star addiction and my skateboarding a part of it. My skateboarding was probably my favourite one I did because I had my biggest skateboard and my favourite skate park. I also have my favourite mini skateboard with a Lego figure of me. My second favourite was probably the poetry and I got so lucky to be able to read it out to everyone. It wasn’t that hard to make an exhibition and I felt amazing when it finished.”
Thank you to everyone who joined the Museum of Me celebration event and helped make the evening so special.
Now the exhibitions move online where you can view them very soon at https://themuseumofme.co.uk/explore-a-museum.
A huge thank you to the Museum of Me team — Paul O’Donnell, Andrea Mbarushimana and Jess Pinson — for reaching out to us and being alongside every step of the way. Museum of Me celebrates the lives of ordinary people by creating museums with, for and about them.
And finally, thank you to Kyla Craig of Art Riot Collective for offering their gallery space for our celebration event at Fargo Village Coventry.
Our young Museum of Me stars are Caitlin Worwood, Harley Worwood, Harry Thompson, Emese Kiraly, Philip Smith, Jonathan Watson, Scarlett Buckley, Jessica Skvortsov-Kirsteine, and Karol Chudy
Additional artwork by Layla (one young person’s sibling)
Master of Welcome: Harley
Master of Ceremonies: Harry
Teenvine event production team: Michael Ryan and Leo Moore (Teenviners who worked very hard behind the scenes)
All photos taken by Andy Moore.
