Skip to main content

Tag: family fun

Top Secret

This month (September 2019) I finally had the opportunity to travel to London to see an exhibition I had been working on from January which opened in early July when I was on holiday. This is one of the odd things about working on a freelance basis; sometimes you work remotely but quite intensively on a project then don’t see the opening day or see visitors enjoying it until months later.

In early 2019, I was asked to join the project team at the Science Museum Group working on an exhibition called ‘Top Secret’. The exhibition is about the work of British Intelligence organisation GCHQ and I was asked to help out with the more family-friendly elements of the exhibition. The subject matter which ranges from Bletchley Park code-breaking to Soviet spy rings and modern cyber hacking is fascinating to adults of all ages, but we were aware we would need a layer of more child-friendly interpretation to appeal to the whole family. The three main elements of the family interpretation were a children’s trail with in-gallery labels, a ‘puzzle zone’ where interactive puzzles could explore the kind of skills that are required to be an analyst or code breaker and a postcard with clues to find and a secret image to reveal. 

Science Museum, London, Top Secret

Science Museum, London, Top Secret

One part of my role was to assist the team with the 2D and 3D puzzles and be the main point of contact for the fabricators of the 3D puzzles. I worked with the team on the prototyping to ensure they were pitched at the right level and fun to complete and on writing labels which made them easy to use and focused on the skills involved. One of the biggest challenges was creating puzzles that were fun for all ages but accessible for children of age 8 or even below in some cases.

We developed some simple cipher wheels to allow visitors to code and decode secret messages. Some puzzles test the ability to find hidden words and make words out of random letters. Some test the ability to find patterns in shapes or numbers, while others are all about logical thinking and perseverance or memory. Others are just about looking at the world slightly differently.

Science Museum, London, Top Secret
Science Museum, London, Top Secret
Science Museum, London, Top Secret

For the trail of family labels, we settled on a character called Alice (Alice in Wonderland perhaps? there’s a bit of a subtle Lewis Carroll reference in there) to lead family visitors around the exhibition. There are ten of these children’s labels that encourage closer investigation of some of the objects and stories in the exhibition.

As well as Alice’s trail there’s also a postcard which children and families can carry around the exhibition with more clues and questions which this time let you know which parts of the image to colour in to reveal a hidden picture.

Science Museum, London, Top Secret postcard
Science Museum, London, Top Secret postcard

The exhibition opened to the public in early July and runs in London until February 2020, appearing in Manchester later that year. It has been popular and well-received by visitors and now that I’ve had a chance to visit properly and look at all the objects and the work of my colleagues on the stories I wasn’t involved in, I can certainly see why. I highly recommend catching this if you can.

Share

Continue reading

Explorer Backpacks

It’s every family’s hope that their days out will be full of fun and making great memories. But those of us working with Heritage sites should ask ourselves; do the families who visit feel truly welcome? Do they have fun? Is it clear there is stuff for them to DO?  My brief from Historic Environment Scotland was to investigate ideas for activities to help families make the most of their visits and to try them out.

The first phase of work was background research and benchmarking. I talked to staff about site-specific challenges at castles and I looked for suitable comparator organisations or sites. Historic Environment Scotland sites already cater for families with quizzes, interactive features in exhibitions, some games and costumes, plus events. But there was an appetite to extend this by investigating three new ideas; ‘backpacks’, ‘an activity cart’ and ‘outdoor games’.

Of the three ideas, backpacks had the most research available and I put together a report looking at best practice in this field.

This led us to decisions to:
  • Choose a maximum of six activities

  • Choose activities with a range of target ages

  • Choose things a child can start to use immediately without instruction

  • Cater for the whole family, not just children.

  • Include exploring tools

  • Encourage creativity, art, imagination

  • Balance active learning with play

Historic Environment Scotland

Our Pilot Activities

Our plan was to develop the three different ideas then try them out in different combinations at three castles; CraigmillarTantallon and Blackness.

We decided that the backpacks would be marketed as for ‘families’ rather than groups or children: one per family rather than per child. And we would design the contents to appeal to a wide range of ages and activity preferences (‘something for everyone’).

We commissioned a logo for both the Explorer Packs and the Activity Cart that was designed to work in white on a solid colour background that could be the recognisable colour to indicate family activities. Bright red was chosen as the background colour as it is bright, gender-neutral, family friendly and widely available. Drawstring backpacks were selected for compact storage, lightweight and to be able to be worn/carried by people of all sizes.

After mapping out the sort of things we wanted families to DO in the castle; explore, laugh, observe, be creative, tell stories, we settled on the following contents:

  • Binoculars
  • Wind up torch
  • Jester hat
  • Puppets (2)
  • Musical Instrument (1 or 2)
The contents card is designed to put parents at ease. It lets them know how many items they need to keep track of (not too many) and gives inspiration on how to use them based on what we wanted to help families do at the sites; Play, Imagine and Explore.

Historic Environment Scotland

Activity Cart

We spent some time looking at various ways in which ‘make and take’ activities are delivered in museums and for HES learning groups and thinking about the challenges our outdoors sites. Our key question was: What is the art cart itself for?

The answer we settled on was that it was to be storage and presentation of materials and a key aim was to communicate a ‘family friendly’ message to visitors to the site. Therefore the key principles of the design brief were:

  • Visually appealing and exciting for families

  • Gives a sense of ‘something going on’

  • Easy to wheel about an open, grassy site

  • Flexible contents

  • Needs to be able to be left outside.

The final solution was designed and built by Old School Fabrications who have a lot of experience in this area and were able to meet our brief.

Historic Environment Scotland - activity cart

Outdoor Games

The aims for the outdoor games were to increase enjoyment and dwell time at the sites. We chose three games to develop:

  • Quoits in an archery/ shield format built to our specification by Old School Fabrications.

  • Skittles; easier than the quoits for younger children to get involved.

  • Noughts and crosses; a more thoughtful pursuit, strategic and similar in mood to the outdoor chess sets that have been used elsewhere but which are less accessible to families with younger children.

Blackness Castle also has draughts from last year.

Quoits

Evaluation and Feedback

After running the backpacks at Craigmillar, Tantallon and Blackness Castles through the season, the Activity Cart at Craigmillar Castle and the outdoor games at Craigmillar and Blackness castles, we set up evaluation. Feedback was gathered in the signing-in process for the backpacks and via on-site interviews at Craigmillar castle.

Families interviewed and who filled in pack-return comments slips were universally extremely positive about the games, cart and packs. Families with children up to 12 and occasionally 17(!) found the packs to be a positive addition to their visit. Parents felt the packs really increased their children’s engagement with the site and were fun and exciting. The binoculars and torch were the most popular items, but all the items were mentioned as a favourite by some respondents.

This word cloud represents the comments about the backpacks:

Visitors told us they felt the packs really contributed positively to their experience. Families came out wearing their crowns, with colouring and shields to make at home, and with stories to tell of who had been best (and worst!) at each of the games. There was a lot of laughter in the exit interviews – and that has got to be the best measure of success for this project.

We are now looking forward to extending the activities out to other sites for the 2019 season, and I am working on ideas for an explorer pack for Abbeys/Cathedrals. 

This blog was first posted in a slightly shorter form on the Historic Environment Scotland blog 

Historic Environment Scotland CastlePack WordCloud

Share

Continue reading