Juggling Jobs: My First Month as a Learning Trainee & Museum Educator.

I have been wearing two different hats (Museum Educator in Norwich and Learning Trainee in Great Yarmouth) for about 4 weeks now and have already learned a lot. It’s a really unique experience to be able to work with two separate learning teams, on different sites, inside the same museum service and I intend to make the most of it!

1,000 origami cranes made by visitors to Norwich Castle over the summer, now hanging in the Birds gallery.

I quickly got to grips with the vast informal learning programme on offer at Norwich Castle, namely the various tours. I really love this aspect of the job as I am quite good at retaining large quantities of facts (I am brilliant at Pointless!) while I am admittedly a bit of a performer at heart too. I gave my first keep tour after having only observed it twice but I did my research and felt confident enough to give it a go. It went really well – I started off with 20 odd people but by the end this had almost doubled! I even got a few laughs and a nice applause at the end which was nice for my confidence.

The front cover of our new ‘Stone to Iron’ education event which we will be rolling out to schools for the new school year.

Arts & craft activities have also taken up a large amount of my time since I started in Norwich. Norwich Castle got 180,000 visitors in 2013 and we had 1600 through the door on the August Bank Holiday alone. On that day we were making ‘Feathered Friends’, a lovely craft activity designed for younger children wherein they make a hanging bird decoration which they can attach colourful feathers to. I’ve also tried my hand at ‘Curly Birds’, taxidermy, origami cranes and identifying bird poo. Random I know, but the idea is that these informal learning activities support the current exhibitions (The Wonder of Birds) or are related to our collections. I have enjoyed these craft activities because I love working with young people and meeting new people, but I am now really keen to get stuck in the large schools programme here in Norwich.

Much like Norwich, Time & Tide in Great Yarmouth are also gearing up for the school term to begin again. We have three new learning events on offer here, one of which is the Stone to Iron event which I referred to in my previous post; I devised, resourced and delivered a session for the Stone Age section of the event. Over the summer we have been working hard on marketing material to send out to schools and teachers when the new term begins. We really wanted the flyers to be professional, eye catching and informative and I’m really pleased with the results. I love the fact that I can continue my traineeship as it gives me the opportunity to do tasks, like the marketing materials, which are more suited to a Learning Officer role rather than that of a Learning Assistant or Museum Educator.

And lastly, a little bit on the Summer School. As Katie wrote in her previous post, the entire week was an incredibly positive experience for all involved. My particular highlight however came in the week which followed. On my first day in Norwich, I was setting up an art activity in the Rotunda when I heard someone shout my name. I turned around to see one of the little boys from the Summer School; he had come back the following week with his brother, mother and grandmother to show them around the museum. It was lovely to see and we couldn’t have hoped for a better result to a brilliant week.

Me in the fantastic BiPlane model, part of the informal learning programme at Time & Tide Museum over the summer holidays.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now. My next post will update you on the incredibly busy schools programme which is about to kick off. Bring it on!