MAKE A DONATION

Help us create a world in which plants are valued

Developing self-led activities and packs for families

BGEN training day

8th May 2007
Birmingham Botanical Gardens and Glasshouses

RSPB – Gordon MacConnell

The RSPB site has five copies of the family packs, they are never all out at the same time. All the packs are the same, cover all the age groups, from 8 -12 year olds. Don’t have one for 12-15 years olds, wouldn’t be used. A particular programme funded the creation and development of packs, but their maintenance has to come out of the individual site budget.

Packs include ideas for activities, magnifying glass, binoculars and ‘pooters’. The binoculars tend to disappear, the site loses about 2/3 pairs per summer The activity books within the packs are designed to be filled in and taken away, but tend to come back unused. The packs are successful in that people do use them, but they need improvement. This could be addressed with testing before production.

(Comment - some research show that families enjoy using equipment – things they wouldn’t normally use themselves, as it has high novelty value)

Janet Stott – University of Oxford Natural History Museum

The University of Oxford NHM also works with the Pitt Rivers Museum to run informal family activities. The family activities have been running for about 6 years in their current format. Running family events in the museum has good and bad points.

Cons

constrained by architecture, the building is grade I listed, so some materials and activities are forbidden
constrained by attitudes – there is an academic bias as the museum is owned and run by the university, and was initially designed specifically as a resource for undergraduate students
an example of this attitude was a sign at the museum that used to read ‘ Children, you are welcome here, but do not run or make a noise’
physical access issues, as the main entrance is only accessed by a significant flight of steps
no café

Pros

specimen rich displays
low tech interpretation means that all the interactivity is through exploring real objects.
big wow factor with building and specimens
free

The museum won the Guardian ‘Family Friendly Museum’ award in 2005. It runs a wide selection of activities aimed at families.

Family Friendly Sundays

These are run by volunteers, without any education staff around, so have to be self led activities, including trails and colouring, sorting boxes, explorers back packs and make and take.

Colouring

There are various sheets for families, including colouring in sheets. As with anything, there is an art to creating a good colouring-in sheet; there has to be enough to colour so it is not boring, but not too much so it is not daunting either. Bits of information about the collections are always included at the bottom

Trails

e.g.

top ten trails
measuring the museum, users are provided with a tape measure and explore the museum and its objects. With doing this, you have to be careful that the tape is one-sided, with only cm on it, otherwise it leads to confusion

Sorting boxes

These are very successful and popular
They consist of wooden boxes with a variety of objects
It works at all levels and ages, depending on the criteria being used for sorting
Families are given suggestions for criteria, e.g. colour, number of legs, material
Real objects used, to increase the intrinsic interest
Open-ended questions to encourage discussion and questioning skills
It works with parents and children

Explorers back pack

These have been running for 6 years. There are 2 packs, one for each museum. The packs are changed every 6 months, as there are a lot of regular visitors. The levels are also changed, usually one pack is for older children and one for younger. The museum attracts a lot of young children, so there is very little writing within the packs. There is one set of instructions – no separate parent and child guides, as they wouldn’t be used.

Make and take

e.g. pirate pack, making a pirate hat and looking at related exhibits. These make and take activities are also good for marketing as visitors wear them when walking around Oxford. The activities are restricted by the museum rules, no paint, only pencil, to prevent damage to grade I property.

Broad principles for design

incorporate different learning styles when designing activities, eg Visual Auditory Reading Kinaesthetic, so that there is something for everyone
activities and packs must relate to the displays,
activities should be something participants could not do at any other site, the experience is unique to the site, this will also make it more memorable
try and design activities to allow the child to teach the parent, e.g. by using open-ended questions and activities in no particular order. Parents tend to want order, but children don’t worry about it
not too structured as people get bored
low-tech activities, but people-heavy, so you need a lot of volunteers to help out

Back pack design

The packs need to be cheap and durable, very low budget, so that it is easy to maintain them
Use real specimens where possible as these have a higher intrinsic interest for users
Their use must be easy to explain, this will help both in training volunteers (there is a high volunteer turnover, so new volunteers are always being recruited) and when the volunteers are explaining the packs to users
The packs must be attractive to pick up; if they look nice, they will be borrowed. One way is by using see-through bags so that people can see what they are getting straight away
Packs should be suitable for both genders, e.g. pirates, animals and must include activities suitable for different age ranges in 1 pack, so that one family has all it needs in one pack
All activities must be pre-tested, to ensure they are understood and work.

Large drop-in events

This is the best way to go for family events
They are scary to run, as you need to be able to cope with anything from 2 – 500 people, and there is little way of predicting beforehand how many you are likely to get, until you start running them
These large events might be easer to run in gardens when space is not so much of an issue (although the weather is).
At the museum, they started with 30 people at the first drop-in event, now in half term time they get 500 children through in an afternoon.
All the activities are ‘have a go’ type
The benefit is that you reach a very different audience if they don’t have to book ahead, which is great for attracting new audiences - particularly if the event is advertised in local media beforehand
There must be a good range of activities, around 8, to attract attention and appeal to different age groups and learning types, for example, digging boxes, meeting cockroaches, exploring artefacts, make and do

Using Volunteers

The museum could not have run the activities without the 150 volunteers that worked for them last year. Simple and straightforward training provision was particularly important, as there is a high turnaround in volunteer numbers. Many of the volunteers, particularly for the large family events are undergraduates. All the activities on the large events need some sort of volunteer input, even colouring needs to be supervised.

The museum does run CRB checks for long-term regular volunteers, but not for the temporary vols working on the large family events days, although they do ask for references and if it is ok for them to be CRB checked. Volunteers working on Sundays, when there are no education staff on duty are CRB checked. There are also signs within the museum saying that children must be supervised at all times, if there are no occasions for a child to be left alone with a volunteer, they do not have to be CRB checked anyway. Volunteers are always told as part of their training that they should never accept children on their own at all.

Family friendly events logistics

Working with the front of house and volunteers is vital for event success
Families come in a range of shapes, sizes and types, so the site must ensure that the potential diversity is catered for, particularly in regard to learning styles and reading standards.
Activities are open-ended,
Sites can use a balancing act between the different types of activities to maintain interest – handling, colouring and drawing, make and take, talks, exploring artefacts etc
Activities are always related to part of the museum
There is access to real objects which themselves relate to the displays
Each activity is ultimately about learning and is focussed on learning
The events are free and drop-in, to increase the accessibility and to attract new visitors
It is important to keep an area of the museum free of activities for those visitors who are not taking part

Backpack logistics

The bags cost £5, the contents cost less than £5
Specimens within the bags include ammonites, minerals etc- all small things that children can buy from the museum shop for less than £1, in case they get very attached to it.
Early Learning Centre donated packets of plastic animals to the museum, which have gone into packs
Other objects include a dice with descriptive words to explore artefacts
All information, sheets and so on are produced in-house to reduce cost and increase robustness, as they can be quickly and cheaply replaced.
The pack must not be too heavy, they should be suitable for a child to carry around themselves.
The museum does not use a deposit system – they just ask users for their name and postcode. The outcomes of this also help with monitoring for access, as they can check to see if their audience comes from all areas of Oxford or not. So far, there have been a few losses, but mostly to tourists who didn’t understand the concept.

Laura Carle and Jocelyn Howe - Art Trolley at Tate Britain

The Art Trolley is used at weekends, holidays, half term and so on
The original trolley was used for 20 years, but had insufficient storage, the materials were not accessible at a level for children and staff were positioned behind it, making them a bit inapproachable.

How it works

Users come to trolley, select materials and do the activity next to the work of art it is inspired by.
Variety of activities are used, including;

posing as art, with props
children pretending to be works of art e.g. Ophelia
trolley helpers take photos of children with the props, but in the past there was no way for children to access their photos once taken
mapping (one part of the exhibition is a room of maps), children draw a mind map of people and places important to them, e.g. memories, friends, families, relations – very personal. The children are then very keen to tell the stories behind their maps

New Art Trolley

A new art trolley has been designed and installed as of 2006. It is a huge improvement, except it is very heavy and the scissors are at a very low height

2 trolleys, one side per activity, so that everything needed to complete a particular activity is available in the same place. Children can help themselves to a very simple sheet (which includes an example of what the finished product looks like), then to all the materials.
they take a tray from the bottom of the trolley and load it up with materials – the cheapest of the right size were cat litter trays
when they have finished an activity they come back to the trolley, with their creation and the leftover material, get their photo taken (there is a permission slip at the back of the activity sheet which parents fill in), and get a sticker and bag to put their artwork in.
the photos are put on the website as downloadable e-postcards. Not all photos go on website, there are just too many.

One current activity is about Mark Wallinger’s piece ‘State Britain’, re-creating peace campaigner Brian Haw’s Parliament Square protest. Visitors can make up their own peace placards and signs.

good for teenagers, as it encourages them to engage with the issues and they are interested by it, and want to take part
the children work very close to the art work itself, which increases its accessibility
it is very much a family activity, everyone gets involved with it and it generates a lot of discussion
the trolley helpers do advise parents about some of the images, which are disturbing

Logistics of the trolleys

The trolleys are located in the main area of the gallery, so people can walk past, take an activity sheet, tray and materials and go into a gallery. Activities are designed for all over the gallery, to encourage visitors to get involved with the art work

The activity designers have to be creative when thinking up different materials for different projects. For example, putting coloured paper through the shredder makes perfect pieces for Mondrian inspired work, cardboard is sourced from the various Tate offices for masks.

Left over material does come back, as the children return to the trolley to get their photo taken. The helpers do try to involve parents with the activities, including encouraging them to have a go at produce a piece of work themselves. Each child is given a sticker (scribble dribble string thing, straw draw, picture mixture, lick stick etc) and a bag, they have paper fabric bags and plastic bags with the Tate logo on, so they can carry their artwork home. This is also good for marketing.

Many users do not know the trolley is there before using it; although it does feature in the Tate leaflet and on the website, in the family section.

Helpers wear uniforms – T-shirts saying ‘Art trolley helper’, to distinguish them from other visitors and make the art trolley more approachable and official.

There are also trails around the gallery if people want to move around it quicker without stopping to create their own work. One trail is on circles – everything in the gallery with a circular shape. The helpers do have to review the trails on a regular basis as the curators move things regularly

There is a pool of 40 workers for shifts staffing the trolley, each person signs up to timetables when they can work, no more than once per week. Many staff work in the Tate anyway and do this as an addition, maybe once per month. The trolley is run with volunteers as well, but it is harder to staff when it is most needed by volunteers alone. The trolley has to be staffed at all times, it cannot be left unsupervised.
Working with the shift system, it is hard to get people together for meetings who are involved. The trolley helpers shifts are 11-5, the gallery is open from 10 – 6.
Trolley helpers also send in ideas for activities to the education curator

Workers complete a sheet every day giving feedback about how the trolleys are working, if anything went wrong, what activities were most popular etc. This provides a running review or evaluation of its performance.

The trolley designers are called Hyperkit http://www.hyperkit.co.uk/docs/home.php?id=4:0:6:20:41

Scissors are only provided to over 5’s

The running budget is from Tate and Lyle, this pays for staff and materials. Similar corporate funding supports the Start Programme at Tate Modern which is funded by UBS investment bank.

About 200 people use the trolley per day, with 2 workers every day to provide cover for breaks etc.

David Judd – V & A

Guidance notes for backpack development

Abigail Tinkler, Natural History Museum, London