Imagination Gap

Forget the generation gap. It's the imagination gap that's the real difference between children and adults.

This isn't a new thing. It's always been so; as we grow up, we all start to see things as they really are instead of what they might be. There's a good amount of logic to this, really; adults have a need to understand the true nature of things. It's why we have 'science' after all. But children, especially young children, haven't yet quite reached the 'age of not believing' as they say in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. And understanding that, and how we can use that to our advantage, is important in planning activities for kids in our museums, especially if you're working with a small budget.

Take a piece of paper and roll it into a cone shape. Chop off the two ends so you have a symmetrical cone shape. You might still see a paper cone, but to a child, that's a wizard's hat, or a magical horn of protection, or a princess hat, or a telescope... or a good deal more, I'm sure. I've seen children spend an hour decorating a paper tube to be a hat or a horn. They only do that because they really believe in it. Obviously, the child understands that it's really just a piece of rolled up paper, but they can believe that it's something else entirely, and that's really where the magic has happened.

That's not to say that children aren't discerning and will put up with any old tat, of course. Children will always be some of your harshest critics, in large part because just as they might not have learnt to be cynical, they haven't learnt to be tactful either. If a five year old thinks your event is boring, they'll say so. If a ten year old thinks your activity is lame, you can be sure that they'll let you know in no uncertain terms.

So it's a fine balancing act, between genius re-invention of materials and quite literally a pile of rubbish. If you're looking for inspiration, try browsing through the Blue Peter and Art Attack websites; they've got loads of good ideas. Don't be afraid to adapt what they've got to something that suits your materials, or time frame.

Most of all, don't be afraid to let the children be creative. Remember that cardboard box you had a child that you used to pretend was a rocket, or a pirate ship, or a house? The simpler the starting materials, often the more that children can get out of them. It might be that you planned to make coracles and you end up making hats, but that's fine. Embrace their imagination, whilst they've still got it.

Creative Chaos

No matter what we're making, never does an event go by without hearing at least one parent say "we love coming here... it's great not to have to tidy up afterwards!". This usually provokes a grin-and-bear-it sort of expression from my volunteers, who know very well that clearing up the mess the children are making will be how they're spending their first hour after all the visitors have gone home, and who can blame them? They're very good at not moaning to the visitors about it though; I've impressed upon them the importance of providing this mess-making facility to families.

If the comments of our visitors are anything to go by, then children are no longer allowed to make things, paint, or construct rocket ships out of old boxes and fairy liquid bottles at home these days. I'm sure that's not the case everywhere, but it certainly seems to be a large proportion of the population who have banned this creative chaos from their houses.

And that's exactly why I tell my volunteers that it's so important that they put up with tidying up after finger painting, or fabric dyeing, or junk modelling. These creative experiences are important in a child's development, and if parents can't or won't make room for them in their home lives, it's even more vital that we as museums and other family-activity-providing institutions make room for them in our programmes. For a start, we've probably got more space for children to make a mess in, and staff to clear it up, but it doesn't end there. Craft is often so much more creative when it's collaborative; there's something very heartwarming about seeing two families working together to build a castle out of old boxes, tubes and scraps of paper and fabric.

I'd like to think that sometimes we manage to show a parent that it's not as scary as all that; the idea of children with hands in paint sounds terrifying, but many kids are actually very particular about not getting paint down their new dress, thank you very much, especially as they get a bit older. For every child that up-ends the paint pot over their paper (and the table, and the staff) there is another who makes a beautiful picture, has a lovely time and assures their parents that they can do it without re-decorating the walls.

So the next time you're wondering whether the PVA glue and sand and poster paints were really a good idea as you're scraping them up off the floor, think how much good you've done for all the children who had a go, and whose parents might let them try again at home. It makes the scrubbing a little more worth it.

A coracle is not a hat

One thing that never ceases to amaze me, no matter how much I work with children, is that your best laid plans will always be cast to the four winds the moment you include children in the equation. Something that seemed perfectly simple and logical on paper suddenly isn't any more the moment that it's in the hands of a five year old.

This week, amongst all of the other crafts going on at the museum we're been making paper coracles. Each child was given the paper, cut up the strips themselves, was explained to about what a coracle was and what it is used for ("It's a boat. For sailing on the water in.") and then they were shown how to weave the strips together to make the coracle.

It was all going fine. Until one of the children put it on their head.

Now, a coracle isn't a hat. We told every child that it wasn't. But that didn't stop them all measuring the bands to fit their own heads and wearing them. Even the parents joined in, helping the children to modify the boats into headwear. As soon as one child had a cool hat, they all wanted one. So much for teaching children about traditional craft methods and boat building. Perhaps we should have been focusing on millinery instead.

It all goes to show, really, that at the end of the day a boat is exciting... but a hat is better. Apparently, craft is more exciting when you can wear it.

Half Term Fun

It's half term week in most of the country this week; some of you celebrated a week with the children at home last week, it's true, but for the majority it's this week where parent's midweek peace and quiet is shattered and many a mom or dad are looking for something to do with the kids.

It's always struck me as funny that as a child we look forward to half term week with great delight, probably due to the week without school and homework, and yet as we get older we lose that mid-term break that falls between the Summer and Christmas, or Christmas and Easter, or Easter and the Summer.

As a museum educator myself, I'm very used to planning half term events into the calendar. We spend more time on February half term than almost any other holiday, in fact, as parents are struggling to find a week's worth of activities to entertain their children with. And yet, I wonder as I do all this planning whether perhaps half term holidays are in fact a perfect opportunity for planning something that isn't family focussed at all.

Think about it. Christmas already feels like years ago, and it seems like there are months yet until the Easter holidays and bank holidays roll around. Couldn't we all do with a break, a chance to do something fun and different to break up the monotony of the coldest months?

I'd love to hear of anywhere that is running something this half term that isn't aimed at the under sixteens. An evening opening, maybe, or a special event. A sort of mid-term adults. An anti-work, remember-when-we-used-to-get-a-break-between-Christmas-and-Easter sort of thing.

Let me know if you find one, won't you?

Inspiration from SLIME - part one

I was fortunate enough to attend an excellent conference the week before last, run by Renaissance South East, all about their fantastic Green Slime project (Science Learning in Museum Education - isn't that a wonderfully evocative acronym?). There were some really wonderful projects being run by museums across the South East, and as a Midlander myself it was a refreshing change of scenery to hear about new projects going on a little further afield than my own back yard. The conference was held at Brooklands Museum, which was a rather exciting venue in its own right (at least, all the cars and planes and fire engines and so on appealed to me!) that I hope to return to in the future to have a better nose around than our short lunch break allowed.

It's my intention to talk a little about various exciting and inspirational things that I heard at the conference in more detail in separate posts, but for today I'm going to start with the overwhelming themes of the day.

As you'd expect from Green SLIME, the main overarching themes of the day were sustainability, promoting biodiversity and generally encouraging others to be more aware of the world in which we live. I was very impressed with the variety of ways that the SLIME partner museums had found to engage with the topic; from playground fauna and flora surveys to town planning, the work was a lot more varied than I'd imagined that it was going to be. But really the lessons that I found most compelling came from the ways in which the partner museums had engaged with their target audiences, moreso than the content of the projects themselves.

Words like "consultation" and "ownership" are thrown around a lot these days, and sadly they're often just token efforts to making people feel involved in the things that we do in our museums. Thankfully, I had my confidence restored that it doesn't always have to be that way; I was particularly inspired by a project at Tunbridge Wells Museum in Kent where a school group had been allowed to evaluate the marketing of a museum and actually make a real change to their strategy to make their practice more sustainable. The impact with the children involved was immense, all because they will see their ideas put into practice 'for real', not just as a part of some exercise. As far as showing that you value the opinions of your stakeholders goes, that's a pretty powerful message of trust and respect right there.

Welcome to Museum Neverland

Well hello there everyone! Welcome to my new blog.

I've called it 'Museum Neverland' not because of some tenuous link to Michael Jackson but rather in reference to Peter Pan's world where children never grow up. I work in museum education in the broadest sense, including everything from events and activities to outreach and schools work, and my interests are in mostly in to how to make museums more fun. I dislike boring, stuffy museums and I love those that give you something to think about, something to play with, and something to remember when you go home. Creating engaging learning experiences is definitely my aim.

I do a lot of work with and for children, but I'd like to think that the lessons we learn whilst planning child-friendly exhibitions don't have to stay solely in that 'family-friendly' section of a museum. Most adults like to play with the toys too, don't they?

So that's going to be the tone for the blog. Look out here for a gamut of exciting and inspiring things from the world of museums!