Stepping into Shoemakers Museum

THE adventurous Shoemakers Museum at Street is one of the main venues for this year’s Somerset Art Weeks, from hosting the launch of the family programme with children’s author Jasbinder Bilan to a fascinating and immersive installation by artists and performers Melanie Thompson and Helen Ottoway, the Frome-based composer.

Step by Step is open during the museum’s opening hours (10am to 4pm) and is free with museum entry until 3rd October. There are performances at noon and 2pm on Saturday 3rd October.

Helen and Melanie created Step by Step as a site-specific, immersive, interactive and constantly changing response to two of the long museum corridors and the collections. It includes recorded and live sound, movement, found objects and draws lines between Somerset’s prehistoric past and the present.

A second SAW event at Shoemakers Museum is Hybrid Selves. Artist Kirsten Madeira-Revell and writer Polly Hall have created new mythological hybrid creatures inspired by the many different things that make us who we are — our backgrounds, our families, our passions and our dreams. The exhibition runs to 1st October.

Shoemakers Museum is Mendip venue 068 on the SAW map.

The pictures show images from the two exhibitions.