Last Friday we trotted over to Birmingham to see the Lost in Lace Exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. For the first half an hour we stayed firmly entrenched in hubby’s car as the rain drops were so heavy they were bouncing up six inches after they had hit the pavement. Eventually we got into the museum, the boys went off for another look at The Staffordshire Hoard whilst I had a look at the lace. This gave me the time that I find is necessary to slow down to a pace which engages the arty side of my brain. I rather like it when I can just, if I listen very carefully, hear my own breathing, rather than the clod hopping sound of a boisterous teenager bouncing around a wooden floor whilst making audible sighs as to just how long his mother is going to be. It gave me time to appreciate the art of lace on a completely different scale.

I will show you just a couple of exhibits as it is a small show and I can’t give everything away. I thought this was rather spectacular, and immediately saw the use of it on a commercial scale where it could be used for partitioning of open plan buildings.

And I loved this, envisioning the garden on this side, the allotment end of the garden on the other.

And then the boys came back, there was this one exhibition where you entered a very small room which then went black as ink and waited for the lights to shine upon the lace with different colours and angles. I thought son no.2 might like this and he did, but only because I was trying to take a photograph of him in the pitch black and he kept moving. So the game at which he giggled was to catch him in camera shot whilst he moved as silently as a ninja. It was great fun, I did get this photograph of him.

Which is quite arty in its own way.

The best part was because he had giggled and enjoyed himself, he then went around the exhibition with renewed interest. Perhaps that is the secret to bringing younger people into the arts, sneak a few unexpected twists in and they won’t even realise how they have been drawn in.