Online exhibition

The Storybox Collective

Finding Ways In showcases individual and collaborative work by the interdisciplinary creative researchers group The Storybox Collective.

Inspired by explorations of the rich and varied material and hidden gems housed in Glyndebourne’s archive, Finding Ways In showcases individual and collaborative work by the interdisciplinary creative researchers group The Storybox Collective.

Working closely with Glyndebourne’s archivist Philip Boot, the Collective have uncovered a diverse and compelling range of content to inform their research and approaches to making.

The exhibition’s title: Finding Ways In is multi-layered. Influenced by Collective member Sadie Cook’s initial exploration of finding ‘ways in’ to opera, it additionally captures the process of examining the archive and its artefacts as sources of creative possibilities. Traces of the past categorised under themes of people, performance and place led to the development of a variety of creative outputs inspired by artefacts. These include the correspondence of set designer Beni Montresor; the project: Potter to the Universe, prompted by a newspaper clipping of a Wedgwood Olivier Award from 1977; the cross hatch patterns in David Hockney’s designs for The Rake’s Progress, leading to two separate investigations; and an undated plan of planting for the Urn Garden, inspiring an exploration of Glyndebourne’s Dye Garden and a poetic collaboration.

‘Archives are frequently seen as fusty repositories where you have to know what you’re looking for in order to find it. If you turn this on its head, and rummage through them with an open and inquisitive mind, who knows what you’ll discover …’

– The Storybox Collective, 2017

About The Storybox Collective

The Storybox Collective is a group of artists, designers and writers working with archives to explore the potential of archival research through collaborative making. The Collective was founded in 2017 by Clare Conway as an approach to revivify archives as sources of creative potential. Members of the Collective are students, alumni and staff from Kingston School of Art, Kingston University. Their recent exhibition William Morris: Wallpaper Man (2021) was in collaboration with The William Morris Society. Other collaborations include Wilton’s Music Hall, London.

Martine Aamodt Hess, Tabassum Aktar, Julia Buckley, Clare Conway, Sadie Cook, Marta Cubeddu, Matthew Hams, Jayasree Jayakumar, Julia Rose Lewis, Farah Nehme, Leonardo Russo, Nora Marie Vatland, Annie Yonkers

To read more about the exhibition and the artwork, please download the interpretation and the exhibition handout.