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On 27th November, MESSAGE hosted a research speed dating event under the theme of the ‘Blue Museum’. Verity Burke and Josie Taylor organised the event, synthesising their research interests of coastal and marine environments with culture and heritage. The framework asked participants to envision a shared object which represented their combined research interests. The collaboratively curated objects were then exhibited in the speculative ‘Blue Museum’, a multidisciplinary institution composed of all kinds of artefacts - art, living animals and specimens, technology, and archives - that relate to the ‘blue’.
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'Blue Museum' display from Message research speed dating event.
The event began with research speed-dating, with participants swapping partners in short intervals, sharing research specialisms and discussing overlaps. After ten minutes, the Blue Museum structure commenced, and participants were asked to envision their shared object for display. The pairs were then invited to write a museum label for their object of choice. The label did not have to be strictly factual, but could be speculative or draw on emotion, such as a memory or the reason why someone entered their field of study. The outcome was rich and diverse, with objects ranging from a diorama depicting a seabird soaked in crude oil, reflecting the devastation of the anthropocene, to a Mahakala amulet memorialising the God of time, drawing attention to the intersections between pasts and futures.