A Note from the Curator
Hello, and welcome to The Somewhat British Museum.
I am a British artist and a lifelong lover of museums. Like many, I grew up wandering their halls, mesmerised by the sheer weight of history. That sense of awe has never left me.
To be perfectly honest, this entire project began with a single, flippant question, inspired by a line from a movie. The first song I wrote was "Greece, Why Are You Obsessed With Me?" - my tongue-in-cheek reaction to the relentless debate over the Parthenon Marbles. My starting point was, genuinely: Why are they so obsessed with these stones?
But a project has a way of teaching its creator. As I wrote, I fell down a rabbit hole of research, and my perspective began to shift. I started to listen to the voices of the people whose heritage is displayed behind the glass, and I began to understand.
I discovered that my role wasn't just to satirise the British position, but to honour the stories of those whose history has been plundered. I felt a new sense of obligation to tell their story with respect, gaining a profound appreciation for the immense cultural and spiritual importance these artifacts hold for their people.
That is the central tension of this musical. On one side, you have the strong, unwavering stance of the institution. On the other, the deep, emotional plea of a culture for the return of its soul. Both have a story. Both have a voice. And for decades, they have been locked in a very polite, "let's-talk-about-it" stalemate where, ultimately, nothing changes.
The satire in these songs comes from the absurdity of that stalemate. The humour is the tool I've used to cut through the polite jargon and the institutional inertia.
But while the delivery is satirical, the message is not.
My hope for this project is simple. I want to invite you on the same journey I took. To go from asking:
"Why are they so obsessed?"
To asking yourself:
"What was taken, and what does its absence mean?"
And, finally:
"When practical arguments conflict with moral claims, how do we decide what matters more?”
I hope, by the end of your visit, you’ll understand why they can’t just ‘get over it’.
Thank you for visiting the collection.
The Curator
A Note on the Creation Process
It is important to mention the tools used to bring this collection to life. The musical arrangements for this project were produced in collaboration with AI; I generated musical elements which I then arranged, edited, and produced.
This was a deliberate artistic choice. It felt fitting to use a powerful, modern, and ethically complex tool to tell a story about how a powerful, historical entity used its own tools - of empire, of industry, of law - to acquire its collection.
In this process, my role was that of the director, the prompter, the curator of ideas. The AI was the orchestra, capable of playing anything I could imagine, trained on the vast patterns of human musical history - much of it used without the explicit consent of its original creators.
Does using a tool trained on a library of human creation to critique the acquisition of human creation present its own ethical paradox?
Yes. I believe it does.
So, I am doing what I wish institutions would do when faced with their own complicity: acknowledging it, and taking action. A portion of the proceeds from this project will go toward establishing a new fund to help artists and creators whose work and livelihoods have been impacted by AI.
Perhaps that is the deeper question this project asks: What does accountability look like when we all benefit from systems we find troubling? The museum says it preserves and educates. I say I'm democratising music creation. Both statements contain truth. Both avoid the harder questions.
What matters is what we do next.
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