A scientist’s adventures in Artland*

At the start of this year, I was reflecting (as is customary) on my 2016 projects and thinking about what training and professional development I might want to do in 2017.

Something I had been thinking more about was educational theory, pedagogy and learning theory. Some of this was prompted by reading I’d set for my online students on the University of Edinburgh MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement, so rather than more theory I wanted to see some approaches I’m less familiar with in action – preferably in a context I’m less familiar with too.

Over the years I’ve studied and practise science communication in most forms, worked in outdoor education centres, and I am working more often now also in heritage contexts… Then I came across Little Sparks and Art Sparks at Jupiter Artland and saw they have a volunteer programme. Perfect.

Jupiter Artland is a private collection of contemporary sculpture open to the public in gardens and woodland near Edinburgh. It was an Art Fund Museum of the Year finalist in 2016. Little Sparks is their pre-school programme during term time which follows a Montessori approach and allows child-led exploration of the modern art in the Artland and the woodland setting. A classroom within the grounds opens on one side to an enclosed area of woodland where the children can explore freely in all weathers. I was accepted as a learning volunteer for a six-week block starting Easter Tuesday until the end of May. Little Sparks leaders are qualified in Montessori and Forest School methods and the educational philosophy behind these sessions is to be child led and blend imaginative play, outdoor play, art and creativity and a little bit of science (in the sense of experimentation and discovery about the world around them).

Sessions are open to children from age 2.5 to 5 years and booked in blocks. Over time cohorts have developed who stay with the programme right through and because of this, some classes have more 2-3 year olds and others more 5 year olds. On the day of the week I volunteered, the morning class was quite young while the afternoon group was much older, including some homeschooled or flexi-schooled children of primary 1 age.

It was noticeable that the younger children and any new older children needed to be given options and suggestions for things to do with all the stimulus and resources set out, whereas those more familiar with the environment often arrived with their own ideas and plans for activities and projects. Session leaders were skilled at engaging individuals in the former group and finding something to pique their interest and get them involved. They were also enthusiastic about enabling the children with their own ideas and projects and helping them develop these – without ever telling them what to do – a real skill!

In most of my work, activities and workshops are quite outcome-led. Despite the fact that both science and art are at their core open processes of discovery, those of us who plan workshops or drop-in activities too often design them to allow the participants to “make an X” or “discover Y”. There are lots of reasons for this, not least the logistics of resourcing and marketing something totally open and also my observations about how it takes participants some time to become comfortable enough in an environment to really get stuck in without being given a specific task.

You can read more about what we did in each session I helped with (and see photos) on the Little Sparks blog written by Julie who planned and led the sessions with assistant Catriona.

Since finishing with Jupiter Artland I’ve started working with Historic Environment Scotland and the Burrell Collection and for both clients I’m thinking about under-5s and about free play for early years and older audiences. I’ve also just returned from the BIG Event at the Centre for Life where they have a relatively new “making space” and where we talked about how science centre staff and exhibit designers like myself need to work harder to resist giving answers and instead focus on encouraging exploration.

I found my time in the Artland inspiring and have since taken my own son to the holiday programme “Art Sparks” which he loved. I have seen new ways of working, met some lovely people (and children and parents) and spent time in an inspiring environment – I highly recommend volunteering for professional development.

*The title of this blog post is of course very much tongue in cheek – I truly believe everyone is an artist and everyone a scientist! There is no dichotomy.

The art and science of electricity

 

“Crackle Tubes”, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

This week for a client proposal I’ve been pulling together all the electricity exhibitions, exhibits and activities that I’ve worked on over the years.

There have certainly been a few!

Electricity is a great topic to cover with hands-on exhibits but there are so many different styles and approaches depending on the audience and storyline.

Electrical exhibits can be artistic, like these “crackle tubes” by Wayne Strattman, designed as an attractor object to draw the visitor’s attention. This approach has a long and illustrious history, with clear lineage back to public demonstrations of the 19th century.

The Royal Institution‘s Christmas Lectures were created by Michael Faraday and first held in 1825, Faraday once held the post of Ri’s science demonstration technician and himself presented the 1829 lectures on the topic of Electricity (Electromagnetic induction being one of Faraday’s great discoveries), wow-ing the public with great arcs and sparks.

Plasma Ball, Enquire, National Museum of Scotland

Wimshurst Machine, Enquire, National Museum of Scotland

Enquire at the National Museum of Scotland is a gallery, aimed at adults and teenagers, which investigates the development of scientific knowledge and enquiry. In this gallery, we developed exhibits to emulate the excitement of the early 19th Century electrical demonstrations before the gallery goes on to explore the study of the building blocks of matter, the equipment used for seeing subatomic particles, and the search for (and discovery of) the Higgs Boson at CERN.

Energy Lab at the National Mining Museum Scotland at Lady Victoria Colliery has a very different look and feel as it is a learning space for primary school classes. For a generation born after the turn of the millennium, the link between coal mines and household electricity is far from obvious. The Energy Lab allows primary school groups to explore how electricity is generated from kinetic energy and learn about different sources of that kinetic energy. Wave power is explored in some detail as the Energy Lab is located in the portable classroom that was once the home the University of Edinburgh wave power research group, where Stephen Salter worked on his famous ‘ducks’ in the 1970s and which gave rise to the spin-off companies at the forefront of wave research today.

Energy Lab, National Mining Museum

Generating Elecricity and Energy Changes exhibits

Wave Energy interactive

Energise at the National Museum of Scotland also covers the story of the generation of electricity but for a much broader audience of families with children age 8 and above, as well as teenagers and independent adults.

Energy Wheel, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

Energise investigates the harnessing of energy through the generation and distribution of power. The Wayne Strattman designed ‘Crackle tubes’ above form an attractor and the centrepiece is a huge human-powered ‘Energy Wheel’. The gallery explores different sources of energy including fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable energies (including a hands-on wave tank and a hydroelectric turbine). It encourages visitors to consider the energy challenges that we face today, the impact of choices people make and to develop informed attitudes about the future of energy.

Wavetank, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

Water Turbine, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

Circuits, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

The Community Education and Visitor Interpretation Centre (CEVIC) at Catrine in East Ayrshire tells the story of the past, present and future of the village of Catrine. The village was an important textiles manufacturing site from the late 18th Century and mills operated in the village up until the 1960s. The reason for the siting of the first mill was the water power of the River Ayr which runs through the village, this power was first harnessed mechanically with huge water wheels, but later was used to generate hydroelectric power. Currently, the community is working to re-open the hydroelectric plant to generate their own clean, renewable electricity for a sustainable future.

Energy Bike, Catrine CEVIC

Electricity exhibits have come in and out of fashion, there are certainly fewer around now than when I first started in science communication in the late 1990s. There may be a generation of exhibit builders and museum and science centre staff who became jaded by the same ‘usual suspect’ exhibits. However we are currently in a period of great change regarding how we generate, store and use electricity and certainly the challenges we face are no less than they’ve ever been.

It is important to provide opportunities to learn about electricity, and with just a little imagination and creativity we can do it in an exciting and fun way.

If the world were a village….

….a hands-on educational activity for 7-11 year olds

In spring last year, I was approached by Global Renewables Lancashire Operations Limited about the design and manufacture of a hands-on activity as part of their education programme.

Finished activity in use

Global Renewables run waste recovery facilities (recycling) for  Lancashire County Council and Blackpool Council. Their education team deliver a free environmental education programme to Key Stage 2 (7 to 11 year old pupils) at primary schools across Lancashire County and Blackpool designed to raise awareness and inspire behaviour change.

Hands-on space

The brief described an activity, aimed at children aged 7-11, which would be used in the hands-on space at their education centre. The activity is based on the book: If the world were a village (Smith, D. J. and Armstrong, S, 2003).

The book is about the diversity of people who make up the population of the world. It also details the proportion of people who have and do not have access to different resources, for example food, water and sanitation. The whole population of the world is imagined as a village of just 100 people, each person representing about 67 million people from the real world. By learning about the ‘villagers’, who they are and how they live, we can find out more about our neighbours in the real world and the problems our planet may face in the future.

Using further sources, the education team at Global Renewables also condensed the British population to a village of 100 people and found the proportions of those who have and do not have access to certain resources. This allows us to compare the distribution of resources between the population of Britain and the population of the whole world.

The activity they wanted would visually represent the concepts discussed above to help children recognise that resources are not distributed equally throughout the world or between people. They also wanted prompts for further discussion and to encourage the children to consider why this is. Resource use, distribution and management fits in with their education aims and programme which is not just about recycling rubbish.

The education team had already created and trialed a prototype of the activity. Pupils used green blocks that represent 5 or 10 people to make bar charts to compare distribution of different resources between the world population and the British population.

Prototype activity

This activity provided quite a challenge as the information they wanted to convey is quite complex for a hands-on activity. However, they had already completed a lot of prototype testing so had some clear ideas of what did and did not work. It was such a pleasure to work with a team who were so committed to the prototyping and evaluation process. I agreed to bid for the work and brought in interactives company FifeX who also brought a freelance illustrator to the team. We were delighted to be awarded the job and I went down to Leyland to meet the team and see how their education visits worked and get the feel of their other materials and the experience as a whole.

If the world was a village of 100 people, how many would have enough to eat? And in Britain? 

We continued to use the bar-chart activity, as it was really popular with teachers who had tested the prototype on school visits. We re-wrote the facts and discussion points to really focus on each issue and also to elicit the most discussion and we chose a slider reveal mechanism to give the answers to these questions.

Make a bar chart

Slider mechanism

I’m very pleased with the final activities and the Global Renewables education team are too. They are very appealing, intuitive and tactile to use and I hope will form a key part of school visits for many years to come helping to raise awareness and discussion about these really important issues.

If the world were a village of 100 people, how many have domestic electricity?

Dark Skies, Kielder

Kielder Castle Visitor Centre

Earlier this year, I worked with Abound Design who were commissioned by Kielder Water & Forest Park Development Trust, on behalf of the Animating Dark Skies Project Partnership,  to produce indoor interpretation at their Kielder Castle and Tower Knowe Visitor Centre sites about the area’s ‘Dark Sky’ status and what that means, and to encourage visitors to the area to look at the night skies.

Tower Knowe Visitor Centre

The project opened for the start of the 2016 Season, but it’s not been until now that I’ve actually had the chance to visit. My role on the project involved researching astronomy content and producing exhibition text and related hands-on activities.

Light pollution was a key concept to communicate and the lack of light pollution can be a very powerful experience for city-dwellers visiting Kielder.

Planisphere and constellation stories

Something I was very keen to include in the exhibition was a large-format Planisphere. This is a map of the constellations as they appear at the night sky which rotates to line up the date and time and show would-be stargazers what to look out for.

We also included large-scale flip books telling the Myths of some of the best known constellations and showing the images they relate to alongside the actual shapes of the stars in the sky.

Orrery and 3d printed moon surface

In this photo you can see a simple orrery we had built in order to show how and why the moon appears to change shape through the month. And, one of my favourite exhibits, two panels of touchable moon-surface 3d printed from NASA files!

Most people involved in Science Communication know NASA has a great resource of education materials, however until this year I didn’t know about their 3d printing files…. here’s the link if you’re interested – http://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models/printable – these files can be printed for free by anyone with a 3d printer. Ours show the near and far sides of the moon and how these differ (the far side is very cratered whereas the nearside is smooth due to lava flows that filled the craters billions of years ago). A texture difference like this is a perfect use for a touchable model.

Kielder Water and Forest Park is a fantastic place to spend time outdoors, to learn about forestry and hydroelectric power generation, as well as ecosystems and nature. Now I’m pleased to say it’s also a great place to find out about stargazing.

Catrine Community Education & Visitor Interpretation Centre

 

While most of the projects I get involved in are very frantic with very tight deadlines, some are slow burners. The Catrine “Community Education and Visitor Interpretation Centre” or CEVIC is one of those slow burners. I first got involved in the project in May 2012 but it had been going already for a number of years by then. In 2012 I was appointed joinly with another consultant as ‘Interpretation Project Manager’. My role is to create the (mainly digital) exhibits while my colleague’s role is to manage a community consultation and content creation programme for those exhibits.

There have been many twists and turns on the way to creating the centre via a community ‘right-to-buy’ application for an existing Manse and Chapel and renovations. Yesterday I finally had the opportunity to see the progress on the building. It’s looking great!

I am so excited about this project because it’s a centre that is really going to be ‘by the community and for the community’. All the content for the interpretation will be developed with community groups and members, from the Audio-Visuals to the panels and digital exhibits, the website and event the GPS-enabled walk-guide App.

I will write more about this project in future blog posts I am sure, but for now a good summary of the entire project and the wider context in Catrine can be found in this article in the Daily Record newspaper. And a job advert for the role of Centre Manager is on the Catrine Community Trust website.

Get Energised!

Thank you to National Museums Scotland for inviting me to sit on the steering group and be a judge for secondary school physics challenge Get Energised!

The day was a lot of fun, with students taking part in four challenges related to the renewable energy industry. Jamie Taylor of Artemis IP was an inspiring keynote speaker, and the students asked great questions – I wonder how many of the students who attended will consider engineering and the rewnewables industry as a future career??

Exciting Funding News at Kew Gardens

I am very pleased to share the news that the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have awarded £14.7million for the restoration of the historic Temperate House at Kew Gardens.

This is particularly exciting news for me as I spent most of last year from early Summer into the Autumn working for Kew on this funding application. In May 2012 I responded to an invitation to tender for the interpretation content research which led to a much larger involvement than expected right through to October 2012.

Temperate House (from Treetop walkway)

On appointment I visited the gardens a number of times, speaking to the Community Engagement, Learning, Horticulture, Ethnobotany, Marketing and Digital Media teams. What I discovered at the existing Temperate House was a place and collection with an incredibly exciting potential. It is the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world, covering 4,880 square meters and up to 19 metres high. Some investigation revealed that the plants shown there display the richness of the plant kingdom across all the inhabited continents of the world and could be used to tell stories about Kew’s role in global plant conservation, sustainable development and maintaining biodiversity.

In August, based on the success of the content research contract, my role was extended to include delivery of an Interpretation Strategy including visual representations of the potential interpretation.
The main challenge for the Interpretation was the vast range of plants and the fact they come from such different parts of the world. Also the word ‘temperate’ does not really excite most visitors. Confusingly, it has slightly differing definitions in horticulture and world geography and is more often a zone defined by what it is not (polar or tropical) than what it is.
Although individual plant stories were already well told in the glasshouse, the key themes behind the selection and display of the plants and the organisation of their layout was not clear to visitors. In addition, Kew has ambitions through this project to really push forward their interpretation and community engagement and broaden their existing audience.

Chilli interpretation panel

Plants in the Temperate House illustrate well the important role that plants play in people’s lives all over the world and stories of exploration and travel from the earliest plant hunters to modern-day field-work and conservation projects. Working with the community engagement staff, we analysed the current Kew audience and target under-represented audiences to see how the information we have about those groups might help us structure the Temperate House to enable engagement with a broad cross-section of visitors and future visitors.

Tea interpretation panel for children

This work, along with the Kew brand guidelines and working with the newly identified plant stories enabled us to identify three key themes for the plant stories as well as a layout which complemented the horticultural needs of the displays and an aesthetic with broad appeal.
Design team Bright3d successfully pitched to create the visuals for this aesthetic and interpretation plan. They refined our ideas and visualised them in some fantastic sketches that show the potential visitor experience and how the interpretation could work sympathetically with both the plant collection and the historic building.

As acknowledged by HLF the project:
“…will not only enable vital conservation of the Grade I listed heritage building, the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world, but will result in a more inspiring public display for visitors and help broaden awareness of the importance of plants through learning and engagement programmes with community groups”.

I am very pleased that the HLF have recognised the huge potential of the Temperate House project, and I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Kew team on their hard work and wish them all the best for the next phase of fundraising and delivery, and thank Bright3d for their work with us.

Richard Deverell, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, says: “This project represents a real step change in the way in which Kew will communicate and bring to life why plants matter, why saving them matters and ultimately why Kew’s science and horticultural expertise matters.
“We want to use the Temperate House to open up visitors’ minds and imaginations to look at plants and Kew in a new light.”

More info:
http://www.hlf.org.uk/news/Pages/KewTemperateHouse.aspx
http://www.kew.org/support-kew/donate-now/temperate-house-appeal/

Visitor Studies Group – Conference 2013

The Visitor Studies Group (www.visitors.org.uk) is a community of professionals who promote dialogue, facilitate debate and provide continuing professional development in Visitor Studies for anybody working in cultural and natural heritage organisations.

I have been aware of the work of the VSG for some time through working closely with the Visitor Studies officer at National Museums Scotland on the redevelopment project, but in April 2012 I was pleased to secure a freelance job supporting the group’s committee with coordination and administration.

The mission of the group is ‘Championing excellent visitor experiences’ which really resonated with me. Although I am not a Visitor Studies specialist, I use a lot of visitor studies methods in my work and often work closely with specialists to ensure that the exhibitions and projects I work on are truly visitor-focussed.

Right now, I am busier than I’ve ever been with VSG work because we are holding our 2013 Conference and AGM on 4th and 5th February at the London Wetlands Centre. The venue is beautiful but also particularly appropriate as this year’s theme for the Conference is ‘Environments’. We will be offering sessions covering how your environments affect the visitor experience, how to evaluate environmental factors and what influence environments might have on your work. Although I am going to be very busy making sure delegates are all registered for the right sessions and speakers have all they need, as well as liaison with our hosts at the venue, I very much hope that I will be able to sit in on many of the sessions because the programme the committee has put together looks fantastic!

London Wetland Centre

Monday 4th February will be a day of talks and discussions as well as VSG news and AGM. Highlights include Keynote Speaker architect Gareth Hoskins, particularly known for contemporary and considered design responses for the reuse of listed buildings, and in the creation of spaces for community, heritage and social purposes. Other sessions will cover a range of topics from innovative work in Outdoors environments to Disability Access in indoor spaces.

On Tuesday 5th February we will be focusing on practical workshops. Each delegate will have the opportunity to choose three workshops from a selection of six, as well as the plenary session. Workshops cover visitor studies tools, techniques, projects and findings in a range of environments from art galleries, outdoor spaces, museums, zoos, parks and even digital spaces.

A full programme and booking form can be found at http://visitors.org.uk/node/511 and, although it won’t be anything like taking part in person, I am sure that many of the resources will be posted on the website too, I will post a link here when that happens.

How does your garden grow?

Interpreting Gardens

Recently I’ve been working with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on plans for the restoration of their Temperate House. As part of the research for this project I spent a day last week at two really special gardens in London museums; the Geffrye Museum of the Home and the Horniman Museum. The gardens at both these museums had been suggested to us as among examples of good interpretation.

Geffrye Museum Garden

The Geffrye is a museum which consists of a number of period rooms with related period gardens and a herb garden. The permanent interpretation of these gardens is quite standard, with a map and occasional boards to complement the plant labels.

Geffrye Herb Garden map

Panel at Geffrye

However, where the Geffrye really excels is in the community and youth projects they do within their museum and gardens. Examples in the gardens include an Asian women’s group private garden, a ‘Plant Explorers’ trail, soap making and baking workshops with herbs and temporary graphic signs on stakes which can be put out for family fun days and school holidays.

The Horniman gardens were our next stop on this wonderfully sunny day and with such good weather we were able to see just how well-used these free gardens are by the local community.

Horniman medicinal garden

The museum has always had a small botanic garden, however recently they were re-designed to emphasise the links between plants in the garden and the cultural objects inside the museum.

Medicinal garden intro panel

Here’s an example in the food garden where there is information about the plants (grains) enhanced by links to objects inside the museum from other cultures.

Grains panel

Here in the ‘materials and fibres’ garden, the links are made very explicit. For example, this panel about silk linked to objects in the museum’s musical instrument gallery inside.

Materials and fibres garden

Silk information panel

The museum gardens are a peaceful oasis in south-east London and well-used by families and groups of all ages. Many garden visitors may not have been inside the museum but there’s no doubt in my mind that these panels make going into the museum a far more interesting prospect.

To finish I had to include two images of the Sound Garden – this isn’t actually a garden of plants so should not have been the focus of our visit but I had to stop and listen to the instruments being played by groups of children and parents. It is a fantastic outdoor interactive space and I am really impressed at how it is so well linked to the inside collections.

Horniman Sound Garden

Sound Garden intro panel

If you get the chance, I would highly recommend a visit to both these wonderful museums and gardens which are now linked directly by a very easy overground rail journey of less than half an hour.

What do Museums and Wilderness have in common?

I have two real interests in life, one is my work in interpretation, the other is spending time in the outdoors, and specifically wild landscapes.

Sligachan Glen, John Muir Trust
Image copyright: John Allan

Recently I’ve been working on a piece of research for my part-time MSc in Sustainable Mountain Development exploring how organisations involved with conserving wild or mountain areas approach ‘interpretation’ in mountain landscapes. My intention was that as well as fulfilling my degree requirements, the outcomes might be helpful for my current and future work with clients including museums, a festival, a university and a botanic gardens.

Five interviewees from four organisations; the John Muir Trust, National Trust for Scotland, Forestry Commission Scotland and Woodland Trust Scotland were kind enough to give me some of their time in the form of a visit or telephone interview and for that I’m very grateful. I really enjoyed these conversations and found they provided lots of food for thought.

National Trust for Scotland leaflets

I won’t bore you with all the details of my research (email me if you would like a copy of the report), although I discovered a lot about current trends and policy at the various organisations to feel really positive about.  But I will share with you my main conclusion:- there are far more similarities between museum interpretation and wild land interpretation than differences.

The nature of the work is very similar, and almost all the tools and techniques used are identical, as are the skills required. Re-reading Tilden’s ‘Interpreting our Heritage’ (1957), a book often referred to by many schools of interpretation but in my experience rarely referred to by museum staff, I noted how relevant his writing is to museum work. Tilden talks about the importance of ‘the Thing Itself’ in the same way that museums stress the importance of the ‘real thing’ or genuine objects. He discusses the importance of ‘relating’ information to people’s own experience in the same way museum staff talk about constructivist learning models. He also talks about the importance of story-telling in the same way museums do.

Glen Finglas, the Woodland Trust’s largest property in Scotland

There are only really two main differences I noticed between interpretation of landscapes and interpretation in museums. The first is the emphasis put on ‘the experience’. Museums are keen for their visitors to have enjoyable experiences; however they do not often articulate it as a key aim as strongly as the organisations managing landscapes do. There is a strong feeling among landscape interpreters that the experience is a holistic one which is ‘good for the soul’. This feeling doesn’t tend to be expressed among museum professionals about museum visits.

Glen Finglas

The second, and biggest, difference I can see is that the rational for providing interpretation is different between museums and landscape organisations. By far the strongest rational that came out of my research was that all the landscape interpreters believed that interpretation helped their organisation justify its existence and could lead ultimately to better conservation of the landscapes in question. As Tilden quoted from a US National Park Service Manual:

Through interpretation, understanding
Through understanding, appreciation
Through appreciation, conservation

Museum interpreters, in my experience seem less worried about justifying the work of museums or getting visitors on-side with the importance of conserving material culture and valuing the preservation of objects. However, in the current economic climate with pressures on funding perhaps there are lessons museum interpretation could learn from environmental or landscape interpretation?

Forestry Commission way-marking
Image copyright: Astrid Horn

With thanks to:
 Andrew Fairbairn, Policy and Communications Manager, Woodland Trust Scotland
Paul Hibberd, Interpretation Officer, Forestry Commission Scotland
Colin MacConnachie, Head of Learning, the National Trust for Scotland
Phil Whitfield, Head of Interpretation and Design, Forestry Commission Scotland
Susan Wright, Head of Communications, John Muir Trust