Slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails

I was reminded this evening by a post on twitter just how much gender stereotyping by corporations bothers me. And no, funnily enough this had nothing to do with the Apprentice, though from what I gather from the odd tweet I saw it might as well have been.

What particularly bothers me is the categorisation of fairly mainstream consumables, like toys, magazines, books and so on, into "girls things" and "boys things".

Such as, for instance, Tesco.

I'm a girl. Can't I like Doctor Who and Kung Fu Panda and Pokemon now?


But they're by no means the only ones. The Entertainer split their toys into "girls" and "boys" sections. What saddens me most about their segregation is that there doesn't seem to be anything allowed into the girly side that isn't pink, and all the science experiment kits and electronic puzzles reside exclusively in the blue boys' zone. What message does this send to aspiring young female scientists? Is it any wonder we have universities struggling to attract women to science and engineering degrees?

Having said that, it's always nice to see that there are plenty of rational people out there in the world who denounce such stereotyping and do their best to encourage the positive idea that boys and girls can share interests. I dislike being negative, so I'll end with a link to a wonderfully uplifting story about the power of the internet in breaking down gender-based stereotypes. It's about a young girl named Katie who got teased for taking her Star Wars lunchbox into school, which inspired an internet campaign.

And what has this got to do with museums, anyway? Well, I think gender stereotyping is clearly so rife in modern society that we should be cautious that we don't find ourselves getting swept up in the tide. Just because Tesco thinks that it's ok shouldn't mean that it is. By all means, offer a princess tiara making and a knight crown making session. But if you have a young girl who wants to be a knight, or even a boy who wants to be a fairy (and I've had both) then don't discourage it. Let them find their own interests; we should be here to help children learn and explore, not to discourage them.

When Rain Stops Play

It's beginning to look like we might be in for another fantastic British summer of liquid sunshine. Working in the open air as I do, I'm used to the unpredictability of the English weather. Activity plans always include a contingency for wet weather, which isn't always "the dry weather programme in waterproofs", though admittedly that does often seem to be the case.

Wherever possible, I try to go ahead with some version of the original plan no matter how foul the weather gets. I've run events in the snow, and torrential downpours, and howling wind. I think it's always more satisfying when the people who do make the effort to come out to visit me in all that horrible weather have a fantastic time regardless. I've found that there is no rain so heavy that it can drown the fun of making hats, swords and anything shaped like a TARDIS.

I have learnt a few things about wet weather planning that I thought I'd share for the benefit of others in anticipation for a rainy summer.

Don't let your craft get soggy
Even if you're inside, if the humidity is high enough then it'll dampen any papercraft you've got planned. Damp paper doesn't have the same crispness of dry paper, so bear that in mind if you're planning headbands or anything else where the paper needs to stand upright. It also reacts differently to colouring pens and so on when it's damp; felt pens will absorb better but with less crisp lines and wax crayons and pencil crayons won't colour so easily.

Maybe it'll pass...
We're all optimists at heart. Even when it's been raining non-stop for the last week, you'll still find that people will dwell longer in the inside, dry spaces, hoping that it might stop bucketing it down outside in a minute. If you'd usually expect a family to do one or two activities, you should expect them to do three in rainy weather. If the children are enjoying themselves then the adults will be only too happy to allow them to stay and carry on in the hopes of avoiding more showers.

It only rains on the adults
For some reason, wet weather bothers adults a lot more than it bothers kids. If the parents are happy to let them, you'll often find most kids don't really mind running around in light rain. Some don't even mind heavy rain. Just make sure that if you do you're running around on ground that isn't likely to get too slippery. If you can provide a nice warm room for them to dry off in afterwards then all the better.

If anyone else has wet-weather hints and tips, I'm always eager to hear them. After all, there's never a shortage of rainy days!

Curators of the Future

I'm off to a local careers event in a couple of weeks. I'm very much looking forward to it, because rather than your average hall full of university students I'm going to be talking to kids as young as first school age (6/7/8) about all the things that make working in a museum pretty darn cool.

I've been having a lot of fun today and yesterday thinking about the best ways to present what we do, since I know I'm representing the first contact most of these children will have had with thoughts of working in the heritage sector. So, y'know, no pressure or anything. I love doing what I do, and I'd hate to give any child the impression that working in museums is anything less than the off-the-wall, constantly changing, always slighty-unusual experience that I truly believe it is. After all, as I said to someone today; in what other workplace could you legitimately and seriously say "we couldn't use the room, it was full of tea cosies"? Well, other than in a tea cosy factory, maybe. Or a prolific knitter's house.

Hypothetical workplaces aside, I think I've come up with some fun tasks to give the idea of working in a museum; some dressing up clothes, some collections items, some replica items, some make-and-take craft... what's not to love?

Oh, and did I mention I'm thinking of bringing a pirate with me?

So yes, it should be fun. I'd love some feedback from you out there. Was there anything you wish you'd known about working in museums when you were a child? I've still got time to put in extra bits and bobs (but probably not any more pirates).

Thanks!

The Power of Google

As I'm sure is the case for many of you, I'm often planning new events and activities. Now, I do have a degree, of course, and yet I find that most of the time I'm not planning events about rocks, fossils, dinosaurs or prehistoric Britain (my degree was in Geology and Archaeology). I've got a fairly good working knowledge of a wide range of historical and scientific topics, but still whenever I'm event-planning I like to have a look around on the Internet for some more specific information.

The point of this post is really just to share a couple of fascinating articles I found this week whilst doing some googling. Maybe they'll inspire you into some event or activity planning of your own.

BBC News - CIA Secrets - from the US and Canada branches of the BBC I found this fascinating article about declassified CIA secrets from the first world war. There's some fabulous ideas for making invisible ink that I'm pretty sure you could do in practice with museum visitors for a start, not to mention some great stories about etching messages into toenails that kids will love and parents will squirm awkwardly at.

Wikipedia - Fife - whilst searching for information about the 'fife and drum' that is referenced so often in the Sharpe-esque music of John Tams and his contemporaries, I learnt an awful lot about their use in military units. Did you know you can hear a fife and drum being played from 3 miles away, even over the sound of artillery fire? Neither did I, but we both do now.

Visit Worcester - Vesta Tilley - star of the Victorian and Edwardian music hall, Vesta Tilley was a popular entertainer who was a male impersonator. Apparently she was so famous and well-loved that when she retired she received a series of books signed by over 2 million of her adoring fans, including famous names such as Charlie Chaplin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini!

So have any of you found anything interesting recently that you'd like to share? I'm always on the look out for interesting information and quirky facts and ideas. You never know what will inspire you next.

The Real Deal

I was on a bit of a busman's holiday today. Or maybe more like a busman's day off; since it was a weekend where I didn't need to be in my own museum I went and found another one to look around.

Whilst wandering around, I overheard a child defiantly tell his mother "but this isn't real. It's fake" to which she replied "It's got to be real. We're in a museum."

I wasn't sure whether I should be heartened or worried by this point of view. On the one hand, I was pleased to hear someone of the opinion that a museum is truthful and honest and presents the world as it is. On the other, I was somewhat concerned that perhaps people do just assume that everything in museums is 'real', and that perhaps we need to be a bit more obvious (not to mention careful) when we do include replicas and best-guesses.

It also reminded me that no matter how hard you try people don't read what you put in front of them; it was clear in the museum's introductory exhibition and in their guide map that some of the things on show were replicas or reconstructions.

But that's by the by.

What does everyone else think? Is this opinion of 'everything in a museum is real' as widespread as I think it might be? And should I be pleased or worried about it?

Back to Nature

I've been exploring the wildlife in and around the pond at the museum this evening with a group of Scouts, and it's reminded me of the profound impact that the natural world can have on everyone, kids and adults included.

I think that those of us who work in natural settings often take them for granted, and it's easy to forget that actually most people who live in towns never get the chance to be up close and personal with a water boatman or a pond snail. Newts are ten a penny to me, and though I do like them I'm never surprised to see one. For families from the city, though, even a duck is a foreign species to a lot of them, let alone a moorhen.

Kids always get rambunctious in the outdoors, especially when it's after hours and they're the only ones on site. But the focussing power of a tray full of water fleas and bloodworms was quite startlingly effective. Not even the draw of playing lightsabers with the fishing nets was greater than the total engrossment of staring at a damselfly nymph for the first time.

I guess it comes back to the fact that nine times out of ten the simplest things are the best. And a story about bloodsucking water worms probably didn't hurt, either.

Vinylmation

Hi everyone. Sorry for the extended silence; I've been out of the country for a while. Following a beautiful pre-Easter wedding, we enjoyed a lovely honeymoon out in Florida. I've come back with a mind buzzing full of ideas, which you can expect to see coming out in the blog here in dribs and drabs over the next few weeks.

A short post today to get me back into the swing of blog writing. Do you remember the Munnys that I talked about a while ago? Well, whilst in Florida we found that Disney have their own version of the Munny figure. The trend is called Vinylmation, and it's a Mickey Mouse blank canvass figure. They also sell a lot of pre-decorated versions, available in various designs of famous and more obscure Disney characters.

You can find out more about them here: http://vinylnation.net/ or by searching 'vinylmation' in Google.

Personally, I like the Star Wars ones...

And yes. I did buy a blank one to have a go myself. Results will be forthcoming, as long as I don't make too much of a mess of it!