The day is finally here.
As mentioned previously I was not 100% fit on the day as I had had my shoulder fiddled with recently and was in a lot of pain. However I was determined to enjoy the day and spend as much time with the public as possible. I decided to join Meg on Team Cup and Ball and helped set out all the craft materials. We had made our own cup and ball sets as demonstration pieces for the public to look at. I drew a polar bear online in keeping with the Inuit theme and drew a penguin on the other side not realising that polar bears and penguins do not inhabit the same environment. Every day is a school day.
I was so impressed with the storytelling area. They really did outdo themselves not just with the decoration but also the matching game, storybooks, badges, and the quiz – not to mention the stuffed arctic fox which I coveted immensely. It did seem a little incongruous having an Arctic winter wonderland on the hottest weekend of the year but not to worry.
The event started at 11 and we had no idea how popular it was going to be given the blazing sunshine outside. The gossip said that the activities on the lawn outside Kings were very popular but we were unsure how many people would actually filter up to see us and want to spend time inside. Initially we had our first visitor very soon after “opening” and surprisingly they were children. We had young man and his carer make a cup and ball successfully and he seemed very happy with what he had made. They also toured the other stations and spent some time talking to the object handling crew as we had linked the cup and ball game to the polar bear rod and hole Inuit game. I am fairly certain that this artefact is actually physically impossible to win at although that might just be my poor hand eye coordination and general cynicism showing.
Several groups of parents with small children came through over the next couple of hours but we were never what you would call busy and rarely had more than one family at a time at the various crafts stations. It looked like the weather had put the kibosh on our event as people wanted to be outside in the sun (understandably). The storytelling which had originally been planned as a signup activity instead happened on an ad hoc basis as the expected “class” size of 15 to 20 children never materialised.
We had a couple of masks in a display case next to the mask making activity but it didn’t seem that there was much interaction between those visitors who chose to make masks and the case itself. Perhaps the masks could have been closer to the activity table or some kind of indication that the two were linked. The object handling seemed very popular and people were respectful of the artefacts and handled them carefully. The links between the artefacts on the trolley and the various stations were explored and it seemed like the visitors were quite keen to ask questions without prompting.
Generally speaking I feel like this event was successful although the weather and our out of the way location may have reduced visitor numbers. As someone who is not doing the exhibition course this year I found it very interesting learning about object selection, display, and public engagement. I did not manage to serve the whole day due to my shoulder giving me trouble but I was there for a few hours and did not implode at the presence of small children. While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself comfortable around them I did manage to hold a conversation at one point.
The inevitable feeling of anti-climax has now hit as we were so geared up for the main event during this module. For my essay I am going to write about adult learning and the relevance of museums to the typical working adult and I’m looking forward to reading more about this as it something that touches on my own study in this course. I am unsure whether I will continue this blog after ED553E is complete but I can say that I have enjoyed creating it even though my physical issues prevented timely upkeep.