How We Built Our Team: Behind the Scenes of a Student-Curated Exhibition

Our theme, Rituals and Routines: Patterns We Live By, will focus on the idea of rituals and routines as patterns, and how these recurring social practices structure both everyday life and major cultural events.

To help you learn more about the student curators behind this exhibition, we interviewed five of our exhibition coordinators. Their reflections revealed not only individual motivations and responsibilities, but also the dynamics of a group learning to think, negotiate, and build an exhibition together.

What follows is the story of that team.

Building a Team Before Building an Exhibition

As Project Coordinator, AJ quickly realised that the success of the exhibition depended on trust and communication. In this context, leadership was less about control and more about creating conditions where team members felt heard and supported.

Alongside AJ, Deputy Project Coordinator Jessica suggested practical solutions that translated ambitious ideas into feasible plans, constantly balancing creativity with logistical realities and ensuring that decisions were shared.

Thanks to the efforts of our core leadership group, something began to take shape: not just a project plan, but a working culture. One built on dialogue, negotiation, and shared responsibility.

Five Coordinators, Multiple Visions: 

How do you describe an exhibition before it exists?

The coordinators described the exhibition in different ways — celebratory, diverse, personal, evolving, and people-focused — yet all pointed toward a shared emphasis on lived experience rather than objects alone. Together, these perspectives became a compass. We were not simply arranging artefacts. We were trying to create recognition — a moment when a visitor might pause and think, “I see myself in this”.

When Big Ideas Meet Small Realities: 

Time, space, and everything in between.

We wanted to share so much, but we could not do everything. “Rituals and Routines” are conceptually rich, but when ambition meets reality, compromises must be made. 

For Content Coordinator Saloni, the difficulty lay in developing content before the final objects were confirmed. She worked closely with the collections team to align ideas with available objects.

During early field research, Audience Advocate Maggie and her team tested their ideas and methodologies through direct audience engagement. The process required careful preparation and on-the-ground adaptation, and the experience strengthened the team.

Meanwhile, Event Coordinator Jessie focused on translating abstract ideas into feasible event proposals. Each proposal was evaluated in terms of scale, audience engagement, logistics, and alignment with the exhibition narrative.

Constraints did not limit the exhibition. They helped refine it.

This was never just about objects.

In the early stages, building the team already felt like its own kind of ritual: weekly check-ins, constructive critique, and listening before deciding. Through each round of discussion, we revised our plans, refined our themes, and moved steadily toward a shared goal.

We are deeply grateful to every member of the team for the work they contributed and the trust they placed in one another. That may be the first and most necessary thing we built.