The Local Tourist: The Barbican

Website: http://www.barbican.org.uk

Last weekend I spent Saturday evening and Sunday day at the "Do Something Different..." weekend at the Barbican Centre.

I've been to the Barbican once before to see the play A Disappearing Number (well worth seeing) but it's a place that's intrigued me for a long time. It's a strange maze-like place that I've wanted to explore before but never had a chance to.

On Saturday night VB and LT met up after getting lost a few times in the Barbican surroundings. We were there for an evening of "playing games and other fun social events". Our first stop was the East London Cycling Machine:

This involved peddaling on a tandem bike while watching a slide show of the creator's trips round east London. The trip I saw went past the Thames flood barrier to some marshes further east. The trip VB and LT did involved a watching the creators eat a full English breakfast... This machine served as a warm up in both body and mind: after it I was a bit exhausted but interested in what other activities there were.

We then went to make wire sculptures:

before getting some pens and paper and settling down to play "Paper Telephone". This was a fun game although I think the 5 hours we spent playing it was a little too much...

We left the Barbican after all the events were over and returned at 10.30am on Sunday. This time we'd booked tickets for some of the events and, while we waited for the first one to start, we explored a little bit. We discovered an indoor jungle:

The first event of the day was "Make it and race it" which involve creating a balloon-powered vehicle and trying to drive it the furthest distance possible. It was run by two enthusatic people - an artist and an architect. They mistook us for either architects or design students rather than the hodgepodge collection of people we were really. It was very fun making the cars and although my ambitious design for a trio of frictionless wheels didn't work (at all!) it was entertaining to use the glue guns and watch everyone else's designs take form.

After about 2 hours of this we were all exhausted and in need of some lunch. We went to the tasty but expensive cafe on the ground floor to refuel.

The next stop was a huge butterfly chandelier.

Everywhere around the chandelier was a sea of babies, cardboard, glitter, pencils, glue sticks, scissors etc etc:

We found a quiet corner and made three butterflies before queuing for ages to get some string to hang them up. My butterfly had a net which contained a caught human:

The next stop was a "Family Film Truck" - a lorry with its interior converted into a cinema:

Here we watched a hit-and-miss collection of 6 short children's films. The first one was the best - a silhouette film by Lotte Reiniger called "The Caliph Stork".

We finished the day by listening to "The Big Ukelele Bash" - a rabble of parents and children who had learnt to play "Singing in the Rain" on ukeleles. This was a little disappointing since almost all the children just held their instruments without playing them...

After that we were so exhausted from playing all day that we left.

Things I learnt about the Barbican

It has cinemas and art galleries.
It was designed to be "like the future".
It's got a hidden "indoor jungle".
They hold events like this where they're very generous with their craft materials...

A selection of the architecture