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Interpretation and outreach for London’s parks and greenspaces

London’s Parks and Greenspaces Forum
Biodiversity Outreach Group

Friday 16th March 2007

Why interpret?
Malcolm Whitehead, Head of Learning, Wildfowl and Wetlands trust

We interpret as a form of communication – the problem with communication is the illusion that you have achieved it.  The aim is to enhance meaning and understanding.  Learning is itself the engagement of emotion with experience – that is all previous experience and knowledge: this is the constructivist approach to learning.  We also interpret because unless helped we often fail to ‘see’ i.e. make sense of what we are being shown

During the course of working at a site, we can sometimes feel that curators are from Mars and educators are from Venus.

The key things to remember about interpretation were set out by Freeman Tilden in his ‘Interpreting our Heritage’, followed up by Beck and Cable in their ‘Interpretation for the 21st Century: Fifteen Guiding Principles for Interpreting Nature and Culture’ (1998) and John Veverka. The basic principles include:

• Know your audience
• Interpretation is not the same as information
• Provoke your audience – for example, New York Zoo had a sign saying ‘The most dangerous animal in the world’ – with a mirror behind it
• Relate, which is also connected to knowing your audience. Interpretation must be relevant to some area of their life, for example, have you heard of the Swiss Re offices?  No – but you have heard of the ‘Gherkin’ – it is the same place
• Reveal, some meaning that was previously hidden, helping people to make sense of what they see

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
There are basic steps to take in planning interpretation and that should be identified before you begin

1. Objectives – what do you want your audience to learn, feel and do as a result of your interpretation
2. Who is your audience?
3. What is your message?
4. What medium are you going to use – and don’t be seduced by the new technologies necessarily, make sure that things are going to work
5. Costs
6. Logistics
7. What evaluation, including formative evaluation, you are going to carry out

You also need to think about operations and maintenance –who is going to look after the interpretation once it is in place.  Plus, be aware that if you have an interactive, any sort of interactive, it will go wrong – plan what to do when (not just if!) this happens

Making hearts pound – a recipe for great interpretation
Ruth Heyhurst, Freelance writer and interpreter

Creating good interpretation is a bit like a recipe for a good sandwich;

• there are a few key ingredients
• it is easy to make
• the understanding of how to do it has been around for a while, so we have plenty of experiences to fall back on and use.

We can think about what makes a good guided tour as an example of what interpretation should be like.  Words describing a good guided tour might include:

• fun
• logical
• inspiring
• interactive
• good stops
• fits together well
• about a subject I find interesting
• relates to my life

We can separate these adjectives into four types that will describe the good guided tour

• entertaining
• relevant
• organised
• had a theme

These are the EROTic principles that Sam Ham, a US interpreter, uses to describe the development of good interpretation.  He is visiting the UK in September to attend the Congress of Heritage Interpretation.

Enjoyable

To make it enjoyable, that really good guided tour will have been interactive, with questions asked, maybe some humour, some rally interesting content that piqued your interest and delivered in an entertaining way.  If the interpretation is a panel, then it must capture and hold people’s interest for it to be seen as enjoyable.

Relevant

If the content is meaningful and personal, people are attracted to it more and find it more enjoyable and easier to remember.

Organised

The interpretation must have a definite flow, like a story line or an article in a newspaper, so that people can make sense of it.  If it is not in an organised format, audiences will not be able to make sense of it.

Themed

The information within the interpretation must be themed and organised to help people make sense of it.  People need themes, if one isn’t clear immediately from interpretation, they will make one up, and it may not be what you are actually trying to communicate.

Interpreters are often confused as to what a theme is and how a theme differs from a topic.  Basically, themes are full sentences, usually with active verbs. Topics are a single word or short phrase.
For example, ‘Mistletoe’ is a topic and ‘Dogs are not a skylark’s best friend’ is a theme.

The best kinds of interpretation are those that aim to move people, not necessarily teach them.

Reaching new audiences – lessons from the Wildlife for All projects
Martyn Foster, Manager of Wild in the Parks

Wild in the Parks– a RSPB/Royal Parks Project, working with 4 London boroughs.

Wildlife for all was a project funding by the Heritage Lottery Fund, £350 000 supporting 3 members of staff and 110 volunteers, with 36,000 people engaged in activities.  The project was completed in early 2006 – next up is the Wildlife in Parks project.

Aim

The aim was to bring new audiences in Royal Parks, by changing perceptions about Royal Parks and the RSPB and increase accessibility. The project was particularly keen to target families with pre-school age children, teenagers, elderly and disabled and those with low income

How?

The group identified audience by examining the local population and comparing it with the actual park users, identifying discrepancies.  The, worked with the local community groups to develop activities or sessions that would appeal and for other similar things that they could ‘signpost’ them on to as a next step.

What activities were tried?

Cultural activities were developed in association with the Asian Resource Centre

• Vaisakhi, harvest festival in Hyde Park with dancing, displays, guided walks and pond dipping
• picnic in the parks
• wildlife gardening
• sports activities with a  wildlife theme
• outreach into the community to tell people what was available at the parks
• at other community events and festivals, they ran stalls

With schools groups, they used very old fashioned books for bird identification with very little text, helpful as many children had English as 2nd / 3rd language

Difficulty with teenagers – ran an event in Bushy Park for a local teenage group, but couldn’t compete with the other activities that were on offer for teenagers

Cost-wise it was ten times more expensive to involve people from specific communities for bespoke activities, but larger groups worked out as being more cost effective.

Top tips

• be welcoming, just telling people that they can come and use the facilities and are welcome to the site
• tell people you are there, go to other events to advertise
• don’t be afraid to ask e.g. involving Black Environment Network – ask about cultures and ask the audience what they would like to see
• link into networks, such as primary care trusts and sports development agencies
• use schools e.g. kids doing interpretation for wildlife garden in Hyde Park
• be patient, many groups need assurance
• use non-traditional hooks, with wildlife as the secondary draw
• tried and tested methods are also good

Making Information Accessible
The Sensory Trust

‘Making Connections: A guide to accessible green space’ publication and ‘By all reasonable means’ published with Countryside Agency.  The report findings include that 42% of users needed more information before visiting and 19% needed clearer information on site.

A  three year project looking at information access from the Countryside Agency, found a series of events before people visit a site, along which information can be provided to improve access. This series is known as an ‘Access chain’ and breaks down into events such as: Decide to visit – journey and arrival – on site – return home.  They also found that 65% of people with access issues are influenced to visit a site by a word of mouth recommendation, above any media involvement.

Research with community engagement

To ensure a genuine move towards increasing accessibility, there has to be a commitment to access across the whole organisation, with staff training and staff awareness increased, e.g. from this point forward – going to make an effort.  Sites are often contacted by telephone before a visit.  Therefore, whoever answer the phone must be trained to encourage visitors in the right way and give them the information they need.  Staff must be aware of what is available on site for people with sensory needs – this has to also extend to external suppliers.

Understand and Assess

To develop access for a site, you must be aware of the situation.  You need to think about:

• what are you designing?
• who are you designing it for?

There are 1 million people in the UK with a visual impairment and 6.5 million people in the UK have literacy problems (Skills for Life national needs and impact survey, DfES, 2003), with a further 1million with learning disabilities (Price and Stoneham, 2001)

Case Study - Stourhead Nature Reserve

The reserve developed a seasonal trail, not a sensory trail, as they found that visitors assumed a sensory trail was for partially sighted people. They used sensory mapping; this is where developers move around the site, noting sensory highlights around the trail to interpret, whether these are sound or smell or sight highlights.  The trail also had a tactile map, signs (with widgets) and an audio tour.  The designers used a variety of fora to develop the trail, with user consultation and testing within process.

Including access within the design process

When a group is using a printed document, to increase accessibility, they need to return to the original edited text file and look at how it can be produced in other ways, rather than simply putting it into a design template and getting it printed.  There is a variety of methods that can be applied to the basic text, as well as simply producing it as a printed document:

• symbol translator
• screen reader
• daisy formation – audio
• recording – audio
• Braille translation
• web page

Case Study – ‘Discover Eden’ visitor packs

This idea, of making any given material available in a wide variety of formats, was used to develop the ‘Discover Eden’ visitors packs

• this gave users choice in format
• various formats were available
• within a variety of delivery methods
• translated into French, German, Japanese, widget, large print format and Braille
• Braille sent out in the post beforehand and get it sent back again – this allows people to get an idea about the site before coming.  Braille guides are too big to carry around.

Another example of easily accessed information applied at Eden are the ‘If you believe’ banners. This is a poem, which does not inform but inspires.  The text is simple, with images used as the main focus, to present non-textual information. Colour and design were also considered, so the use of colour was minimal, to keep it simple and not confusing.  The very simple design meant it was very clear

Sense of Place Conference 2006

One of the activities they held was to get participants to think of words that they associated with the outdoors.  They were then turned them into simple signs and dotted them around the Eden Project. The signs were affordable, flexible, transportable and easy to use.

For more information, have a look at the Royal National Institute for the Blind – ‘See it Right’ guide to increasing access for visually impaired.  As with the other examples, increasing access is mostly about providing people with a choice and producing information for people in different ways

Ian Bolton – Lambeth Parks and Green Spaces

When charge with updating the park’s signage there were particular issues they were looking to correct:

• Inappropriate design
• Out of date logos and styles
• Incorrect information
• Vandalism
• Too large – to avoid the ‘I cant see the park for the sign’ situation

They were looking at improving their interpretation / information provision for a number of reasons

• Open Spaces Strategy – London local councils have developed this, and interpretation is one of the key areas of the strategy
• Green Flag Award – this is the quality standard for parks, and the assessing body will mark parks down if they do not have any interpretation
• Biodiversity Action Plans, in order to fulfil their CEPA provision
• Funding often has interpretation as a prerequisite for example, Lottery Funding, Landfill Tax

Avoiding graffiti

• White is very attractive to ‘taggers’
• Darker backgrounds put them off
• Able to get graffiti resistant signs,
• Need to make sure they are cheap to replace in case they do get graffiti
• Timber framed signs blend in better with the environment and are also more vandal resistant.  Steel structures are seen as a challenge
• The frame is key to what people see and notice within the sign

Other types of sign that are interesting to use include:

• Photocast – tactile signs
• Sand blasted timber
• For Braille signs – put wind chimes above them so users know where they are.