#norwood #funpalaces #jameswilsoncoffeeshop

#100happydays day Two. Happily and purposefully taking the long way home via two buses, with no time deadline. Particularly exciting to travel on the number 3 bus on it's diversion up gipsy Hill. Nice to have the view of a level higher than usual on that road :)

More Great North Wood Sessions

November 2017

Hello! Bit belated, however I would like to share a few words about the six sessions that Coralie Oddy (who also runs Remini-sense) and I delivered in Crystal Palace Park as part of the London Wildlife Trust's continued Heritage Lottery Funded: Great North Wood Project. 

It's hard to express how delighted I am with the fact that about five years after first starting out on Crystal Palace Park heritage projects I have been able to develop my skills in terms of completing my Masters in Museums and Galleries in Education, learn about Joanna Grace's Sensory Storytelling, tour guiding and oral history techniques from the Inspired by the Subway project - and most of all meeting like minded creative people to work with. Nothing beats the feeling of sharing a passion, brainstorming, developing and delivering a project with others. So thank you Coralie and Emmie! Thank you also to Penny who works in the Crystal Palace Park Information Centre building for welcoming us and the Friends of Crystal Palace Park for having us.

Coralie and I led six music, sensory and storytelling sessions over three days for between 6-8 adults with learning disabilities. We delivered the sessions in September 2017, a little over a year following the delivery of our initial Crystal Palace Park sessions for the London Wildlife Trust with Emmie Ward. Emmie was part of the development of these sessions. 

Coralie and I loved leading the sessions and meeting people from different homes and organisations. We varied the sessions slightly depending on the needs of the group. We had a great mix of participants and a couple of the groups had members who were predominantly sensory beings. Sensory beings is a term used by Joanna Grace to describe how this group of people largely experience the world:

Sensory Beings - people whose primary experience of the world, and meaning within it, is sensory. Joanna Grace  The Sensory-being project

We focussed on sensory activities for these groups, however sensory experiences was a primary way of communicating our theme with all groups. I (and I am aware many others) have often argued - If you make heritage activities accessible to people with as many different needs as you can -  such as in sensory ways - then the visiting experience will often be more pleasurable for all  anyway. I also believe in exploring themes that anyone would want to explore in a heritage venue. It is not purely about simplifying things it about how you develop your programme of activities: I believe one should always get to know the subject as well as you can. Even when working with nursery aged children I am not satisfied with just knowing the basics. It means I probably take longer than anyone else to prepare anything, however, it is just the way I work. I need to understand the topic as fully as I can to work out the essence of what I want to get across. Spending a lot of time in preparation means that you are able to really develop activities that: actually make sense; are meaningful to the heritage location; and link to anything/connections you know between the participants and the theme. Most of all spend time with people and have a passion for the people you are working with. This will ensure experiences are truly accessible and mean that nothing is part of the session just 'for the sake of it' or an on the surface accessibility.

I think the photos of the session materials are more useful than any explanations I will give here. These photos follow below. Our main theme was the park and it's different uses. One theme was focussed on the history of the area before the park - when the area was covered with the Great North Wood. We explored the plants, animals and people who lived there. Check out my song about Margaret Finch - famous for being called the Queen of the Gipsies and telling the fortunes of young reveller visitors to the area. For the second theme we concentrated on  The Crystal Palace and included meeting Queen Victoria at the opening ceremony of The Crystal Palace (with added harp music accompaniment that I recorded as part of my community audio trail) and an exploration of the aquarium (of which there are still some remnant walls in the park if you know where to look!) and some of the inventions on display such as Maxim's Flying Machine!

Here is some of the feedback we got:

I don't think I showed this photo here yet. Oh oh though I know it is now going to show up on Facebook because of it all being connected and on Twitter - both places have seen this photo more than enough! I think I have nearly exhausted my advertising energies. They have so far just been over social media and word of mouth and not sure if to put any physical adverts up. I think it would be a good idea in the station cafe perhaps, but feel a bit exposed the more I put my name and contact details out there! Maybe a version with the facebook page on it? hmmmm

Quite a long entry - only read if you are a glutton for punishment!

Time is pressing on and I am aware of a slight fear of what I will get done before my course deadline. I have been through my initial essay stress and relaxed again (to some extent). However, before today I was realising that even with having had a bit of interest shown and people saying that they would take part - that I had no proper confirmations and/or set times to record people. I have the feeling that creating a full park community trail is truly something that takes a lot of time planning and then creating. Perhaps this is even more so because I want this to be a community trail, with ‘real’ community voices as opposed to an audio trail written by me and with one narrator. I want to have a large section of the community represented and inevitably it takes time for the word to spread and to get to know people. I have already decided that I will make a small initial trail, perhaps about the top site for the purposes of my coursework - with the plan of completing the rest of the park in my own time. A short trail will nevertheless also require careful thought and planning!

  The nature of the work so far is that as expected I am learning day by day. I had the suggestion of creating a Facebook event stating when I plan to be in the park and available to record people, which I will put into action. I could advertise more, but have to remember my limits. At the Crystal Palace Overground Festival today, I met a whole variety of very interesting and helpful people. I feel confirmed that it is a good idea to create an audio trail – however, as already mentioned, it is in theory a vast and far reaching project if truly carried out to the max! One suggestion of something that I hadn’t thought of was that I seek sponsorship – something to consider for the future?

  I also learned that the more I talk about the project the (hopefully) better I get at explaining it to people. I am aware it sometimes sounded a bit floury when trying to explain it to people for the first time. I know that this comes from a desire to be open to what comes up in the creative process, as well as it being the first time that I have developed this kind of project. However, I feel that I don’t need to sound so unsure because I clear of my aim – which is that I would like to record people talking in the park, about the park – as a record of current stories, feelings and actions about and in the park – and these will include stories that reflect back to the park’s interesting past.

  This journal entry will now cover both Saturday and Sunday of the festival. Sunday was again a day of fantastic spoke word and music (and more that I didn’t see). If there is one thing that this weekend has made clear for me, it is that I am keener than ever to include as much creativity into this trail as possible. I would love to have spoken word and music by local artists as part of the audio soundtrack because I believe it has the potential of engaging listeners all the more.

  The experience of further trying out the recording equipment and interview questions on my friend’s daughter reveals that being open and having a relaxed conversational nature (with at the most semi-structured interviews) is a good method. My friend’s daughter was much more natural when put in a position of control and left to herself as such. It also worked to ask fresh, new questions and questions that connected with her feelings. We even had an interesting discussion about what makes a good audio trail. The main feeling was that it shouldn’t be boring and that it should contain humour! 

Learnt all I know about how to have great learning interactions in museums. (My montessori training coming in handy too!) Can't recommend highly enough.

One more of The Cloisters just because....

Very cool art lab for kids at MoMA - apparently it changes theme and activities every year...

Crystal Palace Park Community Audio Trail

Welcome to the trail! I hope that you enjoy it. The trail started as a project for my final MA Museums and Galleries in Education coursework. It...

There are now 4 segments to the trail!! Have a listen if you have not before and especially to the new track entitled the 'Palace Site'. Hope you enjoy and there's more to come :) Please feel free to spread the word. It is a voluntary project - All the time and resources have been offered for free :) 

‘I wish I were a cat’ .... trying to follow the style of the book to create art works... either an origami cat/dog or cut out clothes and trees etc from origami paper.... Native English Speaker at a Vienna Primary School... 

#100happydays keeping with my career theme - well any passions in life I have to say it makes me happy to see this building most the time I approach it and think of my lovely colleagues I'm about to work with. Also enjoyed a curry with my sis and her boyfriend this eve! :)