The face of Churchill…on your pants?!
Churchill’s face on pants found at museum and heritage show
I spend most of my days thinking up new ideas and putting them in to action, events, trails, new lesson plans for teachers or project ideas. One of my favourite things to do is to step away occasionally from all the action and let my brain flex….it allows me to get back to my work with a revitalised energy and I always work better for it.
So yesterday I spent the day at Earls Court at the Museum and Heritage show expanding my knowledge on learning, social media and all things museumy.
I heard about the likelihood of augmented reality glasses hitting the museum world within the next 2 years, the latest on wi-fi signal boosters in listed buildings and news from the world of adult learning. I discovered our blogs should be shorter, our tweets should contain more hashtags and that I should always ‘make failure survivable’! I talked apps, 3D images and yes about Churchill’s face on a pair of pants.
I came away bursting with ideas but have to admit that one of the most interesting parts of the day was a talk by someone who works for the National Trust who talked about the concern that perhaps we are not getting it quite right. He wondered whether people see their membership card as a get in free voucher or as a symbol of their relationship with special places. We are a visitors attraction out of necessity and yes we do fundamentally rely on entrance money but our responsibility really is towards maintaining special places and communicating what that involves to the public….it’s the balance between these concepts is a staggeringly hard one to achieve. I wonder what you think?
Anyway I am back today, chain-drinking cups of tea and trying to get my head around it all. So far I have set up a four square account which I think has renamed Chartwell ‘Hannah McVey’ and tried to work out why my notes seem to demand that I should ‘take a leaf out of MoMA’s book’…I’m sure one the dust settles it will get a little more constructive!
Top notes from my day-
- Check out The Langley Academy, the only school in the UK with a museum learning focus.
- To use prezi.com to create a slideshow for students pre visit
- To find out more about the intouch project at the Manchester Museum and IWM North.
- To see how young enterprise could connect up with our properties.
415 words…darn it!
Testing out new augmented reality tech at the museums and heritage show
Hi Hannah! Sounds like you had a very interesting day! I used to be involved in Young Enterprise at schools in the Worthing area when I was in my previous career, so if you need any help or want to talk through any ideas just let me know! Ann