The Snow Queen Retold

An education exhibition by any other name...

When textile artist Lindsey Holmes approached us to do a project with the Polar Museum, little did we know that this collaboration would lead to our first child focussed exhibition.

Inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Snow Queen Retold is an exhibition produced as a collaboration between Textile Artist Lindsey Holmes and Scott Polar Research Institute Invited Poet Kaddy Benyon.

Kaddy's poetry re-imagines the narrative journey to the North Pole in this classic tale whilst Lindsey’s art installation has been created as a textile response to these written works. Our role as the Education team was to put together the exhibition interpretation that specifically engages children, adults and of course the inner child in all of us.

The stories our museum objects tell make them engaging to all. This exhibition uses textiles and poetry to allow visitors to explore storytelling by travelling through a fabric igloo, with each section representing a chapter of the fairy tale. I call this a fabric igloo, but it does not do it justice. Through this project we have struggled to put a name to this amazing construction, it is a dress, an igloo, a story den and of course the most abstract an ‘art installation’. All I can suggest is that you come and view it yourselves, after all, what’s in a name?

The Snow Queen Retold is open Friday 16 August – Saturday 31 August at The Polar Museum.