Back in 2009 my father put me up to writing a show for the National Trust. So I gave it a go. I wrote a one man presentation based around the premise of a carnival sideshow quack called Professor Montague Rumpleseed Drake in which I promised to demonstrate to the audience when the best era of history to live was. In a 30 minute presentation I’d peel back the layers of time until we came to the conclusion “we’ve never had it so good!”. When I look back on it, this initial piece was by no means perfect (for one thing I used to cart a small cupboard all over London tied to a shopping trolley!) but what I latched onto was the idea that children have short attention spans so I had to be constantly looking for ways to change things up. The Professor never darkened the door of a National Trust property but he became the first of many attempts to communicate thousands of years of history to young audiences.
The Professor and his time travelling machine allowed me to showcase my ability and led to museums in Hackney, Haringey, Southwark and Bromley inviting me to run workshops for them and to write other presentations. During the Olympics I worked with Hackney Museum to deliver an outreach presentation to school children about change in the local area. Ever ambitious in 30 minutes I tore through 30,000 years of history! I structured this presentation in much the same way that I’d structured the Professor’s shtick three years earlier but without a bowler hat and lab coat and with added elements of participation.
Spin on again to 2014 and the commemoration of The Great War. This time it was Redbridge Libraries looking for a way to enhance their pop up library events. I had done a few bits and pieces with Redbridge and they asked for something for adults and I gave them something for children (oops!). Again this was borough specific and instead of 30000 years we were looking in detail at just four and this time I incorporated elements of participation and roleplay into 40 minutes exploring Redbridge’s home front. The Great War didn’t just open doors in Redbridge; in 2014 I developed sessions for Hackney and Vestry House Museum, each time cherry picking what had worked elsewhere and doing it again.
Now to the present day. I have been working with Vestry House Museum for four years. We have developed workshops about The Great War, the Walthamstow Workhouse, Crime and Punishment and Roman Waltham Forest. I have developed a formula that works for the children of Waltham Forest and the feedback on our latest sessions (the Romans) has been beyond my wildest expectations.
As part of my work with the Vestry House I have gone full circle and find myself telling the story of another London borough with a view to building relationships between the museum and schools. Between now and May I’ll be visiting 16 Waltham Forest Primary Schools, meeting hundreds of children and sharing the story of the place they call home. My latest dash through history covers 2000 years; from the Romans to the present day. We interview a Roman, play a multiple choice game with the Anglo Saxons, learn a Tudor inspired dance, debate moral dilemmas in the 18th Century and learn new languages in the 20th Century. Its a lot of fun and I hope it inspires some more children and schools to visit Vestry House Museum. For me it represents nearly a decade of work. I feel comfortable doing it and I am still loving sharing the story of how London has developed after all these years.
Its a strange thing to spend so much of your time working in isolation so whenever I work regularly with museums and libraries I enjoy the feeling of being a part of a team. I owe London’s museum services a great debt after all had it not been for the staff of the Hackney Museum who encouraged my madness and supported me when I went wrong I’d probably still be working in as an office administrator and these days its the team at Vestry House who put up with my daft ideas.
The person I find that I have to thank the most for my rollercoaster ride into the wild west of heritage services is not Professor Montague Rumpleseed Drake but my Dad. He and my Mum may not be completely comfortable with some of my life choices but it’s been their faith in me that’s pushed me to be more than a jobbing actor and office temp and for that I am very grateful. Verity is now a year old and there are likely to be big changes over the next few months and years but if I’ve learned one thing from working in museums and heritage services its that whilst none of us can accurately predict the future you can have an awful lot of fun trying to make sense of it once its in the past!
