One of the biggest fears I had, had with doing the exhibition was the fear of breakages. When you have worked for hours, days and sometimes weeks or in the case of the Borg Cube two years on a project the last thing you want to do is see it damaged. Once again the museum came through magnificently. If we wanted to put the models in the cabinets it was quite all right with them. If we needed any help just ask.
The thought of someone else even touching my models was enough to bring me out in a sweat, but they assured me that if we wanted to put the kits in the display cabinets it was completely alright by them.
The next problem was how to spread word of the exhibition over as great an area as possible.
I wanted to try and get into the local secondary schools with posters if possible, but I wanted to do it in such a way that the headteachers would not only want to display our publicity material, but would see this as opportunity for their pupils to get a learning experience from attending the exhibition.
I found out the names of the local education directors for the four areas we hoped to cover and wrote to them in person asking for their help. When composing a request letter I feel its always important to state what’s in it for person you are asking the help of. What can they get out of helping you and why should they help you.
I came at this from two angles. The first was conveying the historical aspect of our Science Fact section. How the history of manned space flight until the present day was an important part of mankind’s history over the last sixty years. This would also include a mention of the technological and engineering aspect involved with space flight.
The second angle I have to say was not my own, but had always been something that Roy and I had talked about in the past but were not really in a position to do anything about until now. A few months ago I had read the excellent editorial by Mike Reccci on the closing of his local model shop and the decline of model building in general in favour of less creative pastimes.
The editorial also went on to cover the advantages one could get from building models and the skills which could be developed for use in later life. Here was the focus I was looking for, for the remainder of my appeal letter to local headteachers. I emailed Mike. Told him about the exhibition and what its aims were and asked him if he would have any objection to my using parts of his editorial for the letter. Mike got back to me a few days letter stating that he had no objections what so ever.
For those of you who are starting to get bored at this point, this is after all a model magazine and not a marketing/publicity one, I ask you to bear with me. For those of you who are considering doing your own exhibitions in the future there may be a few ideas here that you might want to use.
Its okay to put your models and artwork on display, but if no one knows there, there then what’s the point? One poster in one shop may be seen by only a few people who are interested in attending the event. Two or three hundred people will see one poster in a secondary school. If that brings you only fifty people to your exhibitions then in my opinion its time well spent to get it there in the first place.
The main places to try and get your posters into are buildings with a high flow through of the general public (that’s marketing speak). Schools should be your main aim. After this libraries, swimming pools, leisure centres, doctors surgeries, call centres, etc etc.
Anyway enough of publicity. Back to the models. After Science Fact (Cabinets 1 and 2) came the Science Fiction and Science Fantasy.
We used our third cabinet to cover Star Wars. It had been originally planned to use this for Star Trek but as things worked out we had to reorganise this.
I had managed to get exhibition flyers in the newsletter of the local business club. Seemed like a good idea at the time, as there are over five hundred business in it. One of these turned out to be the local cancer research hospital (Weston Park - Sheffield). They contacted me after seeing the flyer and told me that they had been donated a very special figure for auction and could we help them by displaying it for them as part of the exhibition.
It turned out that the figure in question was a six feet, three-dimensional figure of the Star Wars, episode one bad guy, Darth Maul. The figure was equipped with its own double bladed light sabre and came on its own specially designed base.
Between exhibition rooms one and two there is a double alcove. We put the Darth Maul figure in one of these and the museum staff rigged a perspex screen to keep the figure safe from harm. I arranged the admin side of auctioning the figure off. We now had all the Star Wars material in close proximity to each other.
Cabinet five in Room two was devoted to our Star Trek models. To increase the amount of display space available I came up with the idea of installing a perspex shelf in the cabinet half way up. By using perspex for the shelf it allowed light to pass through the gaps to illuminate the models below.
Well that’s the end of part two. Again I hope I did not bore you too much. In my next article I’ll cover our Japanese Animation sections, our Boxart displays and our hotchpotch cabinets.
Bye till then
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