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  • 19 hours ago
V&A East Museum opens its doors for the first time this Saturday 18 April as part of East Bank in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Co-created with young people, creatives, and those living, working and studying in east London, V&A East Museum celebrates making and creativity’s power to bring change around the world. Set across a bright, spacious five-storey building designed by architects O’Donnell + Tuomey, V&A East Museum is a showcase of creativity and a celebration of east London, UK and global makers. Behind its doors – in front of which stands Thomas J Price’s 18ft sculpture, A Place Beyond – V&A East Museum opens its first landmark multisensory exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Story – the largest ever exhibition on the impact of Black British music on the UK and around the world. Featuring over 200 objects from the V&A’s collection and important loans, at its heart it celebrates the emergence of eight distinct Black British genres from 2 tone to lovers rock, Brit funk, jungle, drum & bass, trip hop, UK garage and grime.Interviews with - Gus Casely-Hayford - Director, V&A East - Madeleine Haddon - Senior Curator, V&A East - Zofia Trafas White - Senior Curator, V&A East - Brendan Cormier - Chief Curator, V&A East  - Rene Matic - Artist of “Heard”, New Work Commission - Jacqueline Springer - Lead Exhibition Curator - Josephine Small - Exhibition Research Assistant - Maya Lewis - V&A East Youth Collective Member

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00:04V&A East is a brand new museum on the Olympic Park, but here we are focused on a younger
00:11audience. In our temporary galleries, we have the most exciting shows that I ever worked
00:17on.
00:18The Why We Make galleries bring together 500 objects from the V&A's collection of
00:23art, design, and performance, and explore how creative practitioners transform the world
00:28we live in.
00:29Newark is designed to show making and action within our spaces, and particularly to engage
00:34the next generation of museum visitors and creatives. These artists have studied in particular
00:40collections that are in view both at Storehouse and the museum in order to illuminate them
00:45in new ways and provide new research.
00:47What makes the V&A East Museum so unique is so integral to the actual people that live
00:53around it. They were really trying to find people who either worked in the area, went
00:57to school or were born in East London so that they can get the actual lived experiences
01:02of such a wide amount of people.
01:04The Music is Black, A British Story is the opening exhibition at V&A East. It opens on April the
01:0918th. And it has been several years in its making. And its purpose is to illustrate to
01:16celebrate Black British musicality, but also the history that underpins it and the way in
01:22which music responds to politics, social identity, and also to our collective joy.
01:27We have a specially curated soundtrack for the exhibition that will take visitors from the
01:32beginning all the way through to the end, or really lead visitors through with a 4D experience.
01:36Music is in every part of us, and how it engulfs the body, and how it moves us, and moves
01:43us
01:43through this world, and helps us survive.
01:46We really want this place to be an active social space, to really be a third space where
01:52people can convene, and where people can be inspired by great artists, great performers,
01:57and examples of creativity pushing paths forward.
02:00It feels like we are part of a family here, sitting on this path, of institutions that
02:07want to find ways of delivering to that Olympic legacy in ways that speak to East London.
02:13And we are delighted to be investing in a new generation of that.
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