In November 2012 the Wallace Collection opened a special exhibition, Journeys East- A Discovery of Hidden Treasures! Women and Children from each corner of London including East Ham, Pekham, Ealing and West Hampstead had spent a very productive, creative and extraordinary year learning about the Wallace Collection's Dutch works of art and making a wonderful array of collages, silks and ceramics in response to the Collection. Enjoy this three part film of their journey towards this exhibition.


This project involves working with 60 participants, right from nursery age up until the ages of 80. Today was the first day that all the groups participating in the project came to the museum.
I've visited them in their venues and I've been explaining the Wallace Collection and so today actually visiting they can experience the magic of the place.
The four groups split into four activities. One of those activities was a talk given by Lucy Davis, who is our Curator of our Dutch paintings. Prior to their visit groups had seen reproductions of the Dutch works but not seen the real thing in its context.
It was absolutely awesome to see old and amazing pictures, and the stories that they tell, it's like sociology and history in painting really.
I hope to learn a lot more about some of the paintings that I see as they are so beautiful and intricate but they always seem to have a story behind it, which is not always necessarily obvious when you first look at it. So it's nice to have someone to teach you and tell you what's really going on. The hidden messages which were very interesting to learn about.
The second activity was a tour of the museum, as today was the first time that all the participants had visited the museum. We're dealing with community groups that haven't actually been here.
I didn't know anything about it before hand, I'd never even heard of the Wallace Collection to be quite honest. I wanted to see what sort of place this is, the Wallace Collection itself.
So far that I've seen, it's beautiful, it's magnificent.
The third activity was a tour and drawing in our Oriental armouries. The important thing about this gallery is that you have to almost imagine that you are looking at everything through a magnifying glass, as the real beauty is in the detail.
We wanted participants to explore the Oriental armouries because these are the most exotic works of art that we have in the Collection, and lots of the works come from India or Pakistan. I'm a practicing artist and I'm really looking forward to working with these women to inspire them, encourage them to develop their own ideas and express their ideas through the silk painting, through the printing, through the ceramics.
I haven't done painting before, even though I do embroidery and things like that, I have never touched painting before and this is my first time.
I'm very much interested in silk and I hope to develop something along those lines.
And the final activity was with myself and I was talking through how the project would work, been talking about different ways of displaying and interpreting works in the museum exhibitions. I hope that today gave participants a real idea of what the Wallace Collection is. I also hope that they have come away with a real understanding of what the project will involve. This is the first time that the Wallace Collection has worked exclusively with South East Asian audiences, and it's the first time that we've worked a community group over the length of a year as well. So the project will really enable us to get to know the project participants and the project participants to get to know us as well.
All the stuff we are going to do is to be shown in 2013 at the Wallace Collection. The exhibition coincides with the re-opening of our East Galleries, which are currently being refurbished and which house all our Dutch works.
When they said they are going to put one of our paintings in the Museum I was overwhelmed really. It's going to give me a lot of pleasure, something new which I haven't done before, and I've made a lot of new friends.

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