Community & Learning Intern Blog – Breaking down and stocking up

10 August 2015

After the hectic and very long day we’d had on the Sunday, we took a well-deserved day off to recover (if we do say so ourselves!). This was followed by a meeting with the Community and Learning team in order to fully break down how the day went, and to feedback our thoughts and ideas on how things could be done in the future. However, this still meant that there was a fair amount of tidying to do from the event, including repacking and restocking some of the cupboards in the Learning Space because we had raided them for trays and supplies! An enjoyable few hours were spent re-ordering things and this also gave us the opportunity to tidy and restock the Fantastical Furniture which had been fully used and enjoyed by all the children who visited during the Grand Opening. We also took the opportunity to compile an inventory of the Fantastical Furniture, so that the lucky people who have to pack it up and set it out after we leave this summer know what should be in there!

And all of a sudden, the middle of the week had arrived and it was time to set up for the next family event. This week we were finally able to showcase ‘Selfies at Stowe’. We had lots of wonderful, eighteenth-century inspired, costumes, wigs and accessories for all ages to dress up in for some beautiful pictures taken by our lovely photographer Asia. After a little bit of a slow start, we had some wonderful family groups who had great fun dressing up and posing like lords and ladies of the eighteenth century. We were even allowed to dress up ourselves – though we’re not sure how we feel about sharing the results!!

After the hectic aftermath of the Grand Opening had died down, we had a chance to talk through the plans for our projects with Natalie, before spending the best part of a day working through these initial ideas to produce the draft outcomes of our individual projects. Whilst Ella was working on storyboarding her ideas for an online learning offer and collating pictures for an online gallery with factsheets, Meghan was writing a session plan for a formal learning offer to primary schools with activity sheets to complement the events.