We had today’s class in Marischal College for scheduling reasons and the agenda was to discuss what we might do for the upcoming May festival which forms part of our assessment. This will be my first May in Aberdeen so I was unfamiliar with the format of the event, but it was explained that this is a citywide celebration of which many events take place on campus at Kings. We will be situated on the ground floor at the back of the Duncan Rice library in the big space currently used as overflow tables for the cafe. We will also have use of the old print room which has been moved across the road. I felt a little awkward as almost everyone else in our education class is taking the “curating an exhibit” module and therefore is already familiar with the aspects of object selection and exhibit layout. As I hadn’t done much in the way as research on these topics I wasn’t certain of my own contributions to the discussion, which was quite laboured as it was. I think perhaps everyone was tired as there wasn’t much in the way of energy around the room.
The kind of ideas we were coming up with a fairly straightforward: object handling, storytelling, games, a talk from a curator, and some kind of arts and crafts related to objects from the archives. It seems sensible to tie in our May festival work with the theme of the exhibition that the others have been doing over the last few weeks, as we can then utilise some of the research that has already been undertaken. This also ties into the year the young person which is apparently happening this year in Scotland. And some of the others have already identified objects that they want to use an exhibition this aspect of planning for the May festival was relatively straightforward although it will of course need to be refined depending on which objects we are allowed to have, especially with reference to the object handling trolley for obvious reasons. Some of the toys and games that we had considered would be too fragile to explain to the general public, but there are still quite a lot of items that can be taken out of cases and discussed with interested visitors.
Neil is going to walk us around the space that we can use so we can get a better idea of how many activities will need and where to put them. The space itself is huge but corridor-like in shape so we may need to use dividers to give the space some kind of structure. We can probably utilise dividers from the exhibition currently running in the library exhibition space as it will be over by the time the May festival comes round. Some of the activities we thought of have obvious parallels to items in the collection, such as the Paraguayan bone dolls which we could imitate with toilet roll tubes and other craft materials for decoration, which would be a straightforward and safe activity for the general public to get involved with. I will have to have a think about an activity I would feel confident doing in front of people given I only have one hand now. I do find this all a little bit disappointing as I used to thoroughly enjoy interacting with the public and educating them on the manufacture and use of prehistoric stone tools when I worked with my good friend Karl Lee (a professional flintknapper) only now I wouldn’t feel confident about handling objects in front of people.
Also a slight issue that is niggling at me is that the vast majority of the people who will be coming to the May event will be children; I’m not confident all at ease around children at all and feel very awkward when trying to talk to them. It is slowly becoming more apparent to me as I do this module that if you want to work in museum education you have to be prepared to spend a lot of your time corralling children so perhaps this isn’t the career for me after all. I am unsure if there is any way to specialise in adult education only or at least children from A-Level age upwards. Fortunately I am (mostly) doing this module from interest and desire for self-improvement so these niggles are not major. However I will try to be paired with someone like Meg or Stephanie who are both very good with children.
