The 5th Touring Exhibitions Meeting

After gatherings in Paris (2012), Berlin (2013), Munich (2014) and Istanbul (2015), we’re excited to be celebrating the 5th anniversary of The Touring Exhibitions Meeting, better known as TEM, in Munich on July 7 and 8, in the fabulous surroundings of the Olympic Park – our generous host venue for the event.

The Touring Exhibitions Meeting is now a biennial event, because we believe that the 'turnaround' of touring exhibitions is not fast enough to require a meeting every year. At the same time, we feel that a meeting every two years allows us as producers to put more perspective into the programme, and allows our delegates to focus even more on what TEM is: The world’s only meeting dedicated entirely to touring exhibitions, aiming to complement the major annual gatherings of AAM, ASTC, ECSITE and ASPAC, the global associations of museums and science centres. Please be informed that within four weeks after the conference, we'll release an overview of all attending organisations, with a brief description of the exhibitions/services/projects offered. We will have that on our website www.touringexhibitions.org for you (where you can also find all the information about the conference).

This year’s conference key visual by designer Annette Dooman, from Berlin exhibition design firm Studio TK, blends the skylines of Paris, Berlin, Istanbul and Munich. As business people, we take it for granted that our exhibitions (our goods, our services, our cultural projects) can 'travel' freely – that we can go to Berlin or Istanbul, or wherever we want. We would probably not consider North Korea as a destination for our touring shows – and we sometimes face taxes or customs duties when entering, let’s say, Australia with a German production – but other than that, we take it for granted that our business activities can travel across the globe without any barriers. We also take it for granted that our staff can travel freely around the world.

Millions of humans don’t have such choices. They are forced to flee from failed states, environmental disasters, evil dictators and terrorists, religious oppression and inhuman traditions. In our new exhibition, MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET, the venue of the big TEM Dinner Party on Friday July 7, visitors can see a number of artworks reflecting on global migration. We invited Tazeen Ahmad, co-founder of Humanity’s Heart, who will speak about Technology and the Refugee Crisis (read more in this article from The Guardian newspaper). Germany has had an intake of more than 1.2 million refugees since 2015. As a business person, I hope that in the long run we've gotten 1.2 million new ticket buyers, because selling tickets for cultural events is what we do. And in order to enable them to buy tickets we need to give them jobs. A young man from Homs, Syria, Alaa Sad Aldeen, has worked at SC Exhibitions as an intern for the past 3 months – and he just started as a new employee of our company. We think Alaa will contribute a lot to our team – for example, his Arabic language skills – but we also hired him to inspire more businesses to hire refugees. You can do it too! We will introduce Alaa in the next issue of this news blog.

Long time attendees know that there is no TEM without a book signing! When I read a rave review about “a graphic novel for the Trump era,” I knew that it was a book for this year’s TEM. And so, Hannah Berry will join us in Munich to present her latest book Livestock – a satire on our relationship with the media, set in a world where pop singers are managed by political spin doctors, creating publicity for the artists and distractions from government scandals. Attendees to TEM will get a free signed copy of Livestock.

It’s our 5h conference, so we thought we'd make it a bit more special by inviting the wonderful people of Museum Hack, the award-winning American museum guide and consulting firm, to take over the conference. Their appearances throughout the conference are not to be missed. Don’t know Museum Hack yet? Take a sneak in our annual magazine SHOWBIZ CULTURE, where we speak with CEO Nick Gray.

Christoph Scholz