Data-day life: Exeter museum’s Youth Panel create new data-based exhibition

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM)’s new Youth Panel café exhibition opens Tuesday 27 February.

Following the success of last year’s Youth Panel exhibition Picked and Pressed: The Appeal of Edible Plants, the newly developed Data-day life exhibition explores how data from our daily lives can be creatively expressed in engaging and innovative ways across twelve individually designed banners.

Visitors to the Exeter City Council museum will be able to see the creative presentation of a wide variety of data sets collected from the routines of Youth Panel members’ daily lives. These range from mundane daily occurrences to emotive commentaries on personal challenges faced in light of medical conditions and disabilities. This exhibition celebrates the uniqueness of daily life, an idea reflected in the diverse choices of media used to create the banners. These include fabric, thread, paint, and even mud! 

In the exhibition, banners such as ‘Music: The Map of My Mind’, ‘Food for Thought’ and ‘The Clueless Closet’ showcase quantifiable elements of daily life such as the music we listen to, the food we eat, and the clothes we wear. Other banners such as ‘Sorry, I’m Running Late’ and ‘Abandoned Ideas’ showcase collages that tell a story about certain aspects of daily life. Visitors can expect to find themselves encouraged by these banners to consider the remarkability of their own lives. 

RAMM’s Youth Panel programme develops the skills and knowledge of a group of young people aged 18-25 in different aspects of museum work and supports them in gaining practical experience in areas such as exhibition development each year. This programme is supported through ARTIST ROOMS, a national partnership programme with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, with the support of Art Fund and Henry Moore Foundation, and the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. 

Youth Panel member Rebecca Wood said: “We worked alongside local artist Molly Rooke to develop our ideas. The embroidery workshop she led really helped me… the range of new techniques we were taught enabled me to choose one according to what I needed to create. Molly also helped me learn how to blanket stitch which I used to show the minutes around a clock face on my banner based on time.”

Another Youth Panel member, Jess McCallum, said: “Working on our Youth Panel exhibition has been such a valuable experience. I’ve learned so much about the work that goes into creating an exhibition and I’m so proud of the work that we have created together.”

Exeter City Council Deputy Leader Cllr Laura Wright said: “I’m thrilled that our youth panel are undertaking this work and exhibition at RAMM. They have the skills and diverse experiences to bring a relevant and interesting exhibition that everyone can enjoy in our café space. The easily accessible theme of looking at our daily lives should really resonate with us all.”

Join us in showing how art can be created from the everyday lives of ordinary individuals; learn the unique story behind each banner and consider what elements of your own life could be creatively showcased. 

The 2023-24 Youth Panel’s Data-day life exhibition is on show from 27 February to 2 June 2024. Entry is free.