The Night Museum invites nocturnal visitors to accompany them on a programme of night walks, talks, performances, artist bars and journeys into the dark heart of the city. An eclectic and magical series of events will be held in unusual and hidden spaces surrounding the museum, including the Roman City Wall, the Barber Surgeons' Garden, St Botolph Without Aldersgate and Postman's Park.
The evening includes:
The museum of dark places talks
In Dark City: London after the Apocalypse, Dr Caroline Edwards (Birkbeck, University of London) will explore the post-apocalyptic London imaginary, from H G Wells, Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing, to the disturbing urban fantasies of contemporary writers such as China Miéville and Alan Moore.
In Night. London. 1616, writer and academic Matthew Beaumont (author of Nightwalking) will present a thought experiment that evokes what it would be like to wake in the night and walk through the streets of London before the era of public lighting.
An ear to the night guided walk
Join Rosie Oliver and Dotmaker Tours on a listening tour of the London night. From the bells that mark the passing hours to the hum of buildings at sleep, tune into the City’s nocturnal soundscape and rediscover lost and forbidden sounds.
Starts at 8pm.
Performance by Musarc
Musarc, one of London’s most progressive and experimental choirs, will reference "when night makes a weird sound of its own stillness" (Percy Bysshe Shelley), creating a magical atmosphere where the senses are heightened and darkness prevails. Performances at 8.15pm and 9.20pm. Meeting point: St. Botolph Without Aldersgate.
The memorial to heroic self-sacrifice
Historian Dr John Price will tell the story of Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in London’s Postman’s Park, revealing the story of the memorial and how artist and radical socialist George Frederick Watts realised his ambition to commemorate ordinary people who died saving the lives of others.
In the darkness they swing their manes like pendulums
Mythical creatures will stalk the night in two specially commissioned performances by artist Nicky Deeley, with percussion by Tazelaar Stevenson. Inspired by H G Wells’ The Time Machine and 60s sci-fi film Quatermass and the Pit, two species will engage in a rite of exchange and ingestion.
