Community & Learning Intern Blog – The final countdown

3 August 2015

We began the week by organising our materials for the Fantastical Furniture, ranging from psychedelic hats to shiny crepe paper. If grown women can have fun playing with them, then we're pretty confident that the children visiting the House will also take the opportunity to get stuck in! We then had another chance to indulge our inner artistic sensibilities when we headed over to the National Trust Gardens to help out at their 'Wild Arts' family event. It was so much fun seeing kids getting creative alongside their parents: some of their artistic creations were very impressive! The event itself provided an interesting and alternative perspective on family events – not only did it take place outdoors, but the scheme is now established enough that they have some family groups in regular attendance. Getting a chance to talk to them gave us an insight into what families want from these events and what they enjoy the most about them.

We had another opportunity this week to be creative in a slightly different way, by designing a stained glass activity sheet for St Mary’s Church, Stowe, in preparation for the launch. The second activity sheet we designed was the portrait trail for the 'Selfies at Stowe' event. After mapping out our ideas in the North Hall we got to work designing it on the computer. While the first activity sheet was a walk in the park, the second was a marathon in the desert by comparison. A frustrating afternoon was spent battling with text boxes, wrestling with clip art and duelling with page margins. However, we interns triumphed (in finishing the first draft anyway) and in the interim we even managed to finish the outlines for our projects! 

This week’s family event was ‘Stories at Stowe’, in which our external storyteller Chip performed a different story every hour. Families got the chance to build their own story with him – from spooky stories set in the woods to romantic fables based in Ancient Egypt. Because the event took place in the Music Room, Chip was able to make great use of the acoustics in there – he could scare the children with creepy voices or silence them with entrancing ballads. It was a lot of fun stewarding this event because not only did we get to see the children really engaging with the story, we also got to join in at points too!

Afterwards we engaged in Part 2 of our battle with Microsoft Word in our design for the portrait trail. We had to think of features we normally take for granted when we read leaflets and trails, such as what kind of font to use, which shapes would be most accessible to children, and how to phrase different kinds of questions. This was really good experience for the future, getting to design materials for a family audience, which will be offered to visitors at our family event next week. 

In preparation for the launch on Sunday, we did a few jobs with Kelly including building a chalkboard which will be situated next to the clothes on show as part of the ‘From Where I Stand’ exhibition. The chalkboard is to encourage our visitors to offer their opinions on whether fashion and heritage are able to work together and still be accessible to visitors. We also had a bit of fun writing out the questions on the board and drawing some very funky bubble writing to entice people to write on it!

The end of the week was filled with packing resources and sorting everything ready for the Grand Launch on Sunday. This involved lots of checklists, filling boxes and innovative packing to get everything together. We hunted high and low through the House searching for everything from clickers (used to record people numbers) to outdoor taps and drains, finding a few things which had long gone astray, like biros! We also made sure our family craft activities were well stocked in the Learning Space which required an hour or so of cutting up cellophane, tissue paper and card – the hard life of an intern! And then in the midst of all the chaos, we also appeared on BBC Radio Three Counties talking about the opening and our experience as interns at Stowe alongside Natalie who talked about the importance and role of learning within the heritage sector. This was a novel and slightly scary interlude in our afternoon, and certainly something we won’t forget in a hurry. Just when you thought we must be done for the day, we also had to pack up and put away our wonderful Fantastical Furniture as the House was used on the Saturday for a wedding. We were all, however, well rewarded for our hard work with yummy chocolate-beetroot brownies, so a big thank you to Natalie’s daughter!