Catch-up time – been a long time since I posted.

Coming to the end of the Llangollen contract and with the few things in the pipeline yet to bear fruit, it’s been a month or so of going on training courses – free, offered by CyMAL  and mostly local, as well as doing some interesting work in public engagement.

This work has been for the Museum of Cannock Chase. The museum is on the site of one of the many collieries of the Cannock coalfield.  The museum has been given some money for various upgrades and new interpretation.  The job of myself and the great Ruth Moore Williams (her website: http://www.songandstory.org.uk) was to dress up – Ruth as a cleaner at the pit, myself as the lampman- and to interact with visitors, doing some first person interpretation.  Ruth also provided music on harp, hurdy gurdy – there’s literally nothing she doesn’t play.  We’d also ask them, after our performances, what they would like to see at the museum .

Making sure that they knew that we could be trusted with the information – we were working with the museum but were independent from it – was important.  The public had to be made aware that we could be told anything.  They could say what they liked to us, tell us what wasn’t working for them at the museum (both in interpretation and facilities), what stories were being missed out, how things could be done better, etc.  It’s interesting to see the difference between this and just using visitor feedback sheets or visitors’ book.  The response is more vivid, of course, and with the barriers brought down by the interaction through the performance, visitors can feel free to talk – sometimes for minutes.  After writing up the visitors’ responses in between performances we could write a report that the museum will, hopefully act on.  It may originate with the museum’s management, but it does show that people’s perceptions of the museum can help create change.  The one problem with this is that it does not engage non-users, so we have other days planned outside the museum – indeed Ruth’s done another at Tamworth Castle.  

Ah, dressing up and meeting the public.  As interesting as it is to spend days amongst collections and cataloguing artefacts, if I couldn’t do days like this now and again with public interaction I’d go insane.   Looking forward to a weekend digging at Leiston Abbey with DigVentures in July.  Fun awaits!