Whispers from the Dancefloor Exhibition at Portsmouth Museum

The News, Portsmouth

The Whispers from the Dancefloor exhibition has opened at Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery on Friday, June 27, 2025. Curated by Downtown Pompey, and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, step into the spirit of Joanna's - Portsmouth's legendary nightclub known for its sticky floors and palm trees that shaped a generation.

Transcript

00:00Hi I'm Josh and I'm the Artistic Director of Downtown Pompey who have created this

00:05wonderful theatrical exhibition. This exhibition is a love letter to Portsmouth

00:11nightlife from the late 20th century and it kind of is an amalgamation of our

00:17theatre background, all the wonderful stories that we've met with loads of

00:22different people and yeah just kind of a love letter to Portsmouth in general

00:26really. We focus around the 80s and particularly one nightclub which I'm

00:31sure a lot of people know called Joanna's. So we tell the good, the bad and the

00:35ugly stories of the nightclub. So yeah come down and see what we've got down here

00:40it'll be fun. Tell me how long it's on for here at the Portsmouth Museum. Yes so

00:45we're really lucky to work with the Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery and

00:49we're going to be here for a full year which is so exciting so it's like a

00:53really good opportunity to come down you know have a cup of tea, have a biscuit,

00:58check out this exhibition and all the amazing stuff that happens here. Tell me

01:01what you've seen along the way and what you found, anything quirky? I think one

01:08of my most favourite objects that we found through this whole project is the

01:12last night of Jo's. So someone had made this like hour-long video of the last

01:18night of Joanna's in 2004 and then actually sold it at the commercial road

01:23market on DVDs, that's how old it is. And that's probably my favourite

01:27thing because it was the first time that the whole team had been able to see

01:30inside Joanna's. We haven't had very many pictures, we haven't had any video so

01:35seeing that video for the first time was a real kind of like unlock for us which

01:39was even more hilarious because actually we thought it's more glamorous than what

01:43it was. It's actually just a trashy upstairs club nightclub but we loved it all

01:47the same. Hello, good afternoon. I'm Chris Atwell, cabinet member for Central

01:52Services. So tell me what your reaction is of the exhibition. My reaction is that

01:57this is fantastic. I am a child of the 1980s so this is very familiar to me, the

02:04colours and the styling and the energy here in the museum. You know the 1980s was a

02:10very transformative period of time and I think this is a brilliant piece of

02:14storytelling that reflects what those of us around experience and I'm looking

02:21forward to lots of people coming down to the museum to enjoy this brilliant

02:24collaboration between downtown Pompeii and Portsmouth Museums.

Category

Transcript

Recommended