Builders, Makers, Movers, Shakers
12 August 2016
Community and Learning Intern Blog
Week four has been another exciting one for Alannah and I at Stowe. In keeping with the theme of ‘Builders, Makers, Movers, Shakers,’ this week’s Tuesday activity involved stitching Stowe together out of pieces of felt! Monday was spent preparing for Lesley’s session the next day, in which we took about ten children onto the North Front for observations and to draw details of the architecture. We sheltered from the wind and rain on the colonnade, where we had a good view of the front of the house!
Inside, each child was given a square of fabric and a child-friendly needle, and we all sewed patterns and details that we’d observed earlier! I made the top of an Ionic column!
That afternoon, our drop-in session encouraged visitors to take a #StoweSelfie with our historical fancy dress! Alannah and I had a fantastic time sorting through the dresses, suits, hats, wigs, shoes and fans we had in storage, trying them on ourselves and then encouraging visitors to try them on in the music room! Did you know that eighteenth-century lovers in a ballroom would use the fan to communicate, by doing different hand-movements? With a simple wave of a fan, you could do anything from beckoning someone, to promising to marry them!
Another highlight of the week was our visit on Thursday to the Museum of London, which showcases London through history – from pre-historic tusks and antlers, to the present day! Their current exhibition was on the Fire of London. Alannah and I had an interesting chat with the Digital Learning team, who gave us an overview of how the Museum of London integrates apps and the use of iPads into their visitor experience as well as their educational sessions.
As the week winds down, we’re now looking forward to next week’s session on Tuesday, as well as pulling together some of the strands of the research we’ve been doing into soundscapes and digital learning. Our ultimate goal is to create and facilitate our own session on the 23rd of August, using sound to bring Stowe’s music room to life! Come back in a few weeks time to see how it went!
Thanks for reading,
Fran