Evaluating Old Science Week

In the wake of the very enjoyable ‘Old Science Week’ at Lotherton Hall last week, I’ve been thinking about how it went. I was there for the Monday and the Wednesday, which you can read about here and here respectively.

The ice cream maker, hair dryer, plugs, toaster, telephone and vacuum cleaner.
The ice cream maker, hair dryer, toaster, plugs, electricity meter, telephone and vacuum cleaner.

Working with Lotherton Hall on this event meant that we were able to use the usual setting for family activities at the house.  This is the Servants’ Hall, a great adaptable space which can accommodate large groups of adults and children, and allow for all sorts of interaction, engagement and creativity. The week fitted into Lotherton Hall’s “Six Weeks of Summer” programme, a series of themed weeks aimed at school aged children during the summer holidays.  As such, a handling table and arts and crafts related to the theme and collections were on offer.  Some of the objects on display for handling, old electrical domestic appliances, as pictured here, were borrowed from Artemis, Leeds City Council’s artefacts loan service.

Although Lotherton’s themed weeks are largely for younger children, we knew our engagement would be with visitors of all ages, some as part of a family and some alone or with friends. Thus the best format for the activities – in line with other crafts activities held in this space – was a series of drop in sessions which people could join and leave as they wished. This wouldn’t tie them into being there at any particular time or require them to participate in anything too structured or formalised. As Dee Matthews, Lotherton’s Learning Officer, later observed, the end of the summer holidays begins to quieten down; it was thus easier to engage with visitors for longer periods, and to encourage them to think about what each object was and how it was used. Relating this to electrical appliances and gadgets in their own homes was also very effective.

One of the decisions we needed to make when thinking about how best to run these activities was whether or not to include any written interpretation. We considered for example a fact sheet about the history of electricity, or domestic lighting at Lotherton, but Dee recommended that it wouldn’t be appropriate for the setting. It also might look as though we were trying to create too formal a learning environment, but with various craft activities and object handling there was plenty on offer to keep the visitors interested.

The sign next to the objects.
The sign next to the objects.

Instead we decided that it would be best simply for me to talk to those adults who were interested to find out more about the topic and about the work of the project. This I did on a couple of occasions. We also included a sign next to the handling objects which explained why they were there, invited people to pick them up, and asked a couple of simple questions aimed at the children.

However, in hindsight, I think there may have been an advantage to having a simple interpretation sheet near the objects for the benefit of adults without children coming into the area. This would have supplemented the information given on the sign and provided them with more context and information about Old Science Week. It would also have meant that these visitors would still have gained something from the display when Dee and I were unable to speak with them, for example because we were busy talking to or working with the families.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent at Lotherton, talking to the families and adult visitors, and I think our ‘Old Science Week’ activities provide a good model for running such events in future. However, I would bear in mind a few points where we could improve on the event.

  1. If possible it would help to have two people from the university; it might not always be possible for the house staff to be present, so in order to make the most of all of the visitors, and talk to as many people of different age groups as possible, it would help to have two people able to give personal interpretation present consistently over the course of the day. This would also help with taking photographs of the event, something which I found it challenging to fit in as I was busy speaking with people, and to have stopped and taken photographs would more often than not have interrupted the flow, spoiled the atmosphere, and lost the interest and attention of the children.
  2. It may seem an obvious point, but university attendees should have some sort of identifying badge to wear; I had nothing at the beginning and I felt the difference it made.
  3. As mentioned above, I think a page of written interpretation aimed at the adult visitors who passed through the Servants’ Hall over the course of the week would have been helpful. It would not have been long, but would have added some depth and context to the objects on display, and to the theme of the week more generally.
A picture of the house drawn for us by one of the kids. Thanks!
A picture of the house drawn for us by one of the kids. Thanks!

Please leave any comments below; if you came along one day last week, we’d like to hear what you thought of it, and if you’re thinking of doing something similar to this in another country house then please get in touch!

Hello! Hello! Are you there?

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Hello! Gran? Are you there?

Day 3 of Old Science Week at Lotherton Hall saw us making telephones out of plastic cups and string. This was a very good activity for both the older and the younger children to engage with, as they could first be as creative as they wished with their cups, and then, with a little help on the knots, they could make and experiment with a rudimentary scientific instrument. The children really got into this, and there was plenty of shouting, some loud whispering, and even a bit of singing as they worked out how best to use them by making sure the string was pulled tight. However, we soon found it was a good idea to put some sellotape over the hole to make sure the string didn’t keep popping out of the cups! The adults had fun too; here is one of the children talking to his grandmother on his newly decorated string telephone!

A heater? A bug zapper? It's a toaster!

A heater? A bug zapper? It’s a toaster!

The old electrical objects were still on display, and I got some intriguing responses when asking the children to work out what the toaster was; a heater was a fairly obvious guess, but a bug zapper and a laminator were definitely evidence of some pretty good out-of-the-box thinking from the visitors. As one of the items was an ice cream maker, which was not electrical, I asked the children to think about which of the items was the odd one out and did not use electricity. Some were surprised to be told that not everyone had liked electric lights at first, because they were considered to be too bright, and also to learn that old telephones were not as easy to use as their modern equivalents.

A colourful set of telephones.

When talking to the children about the electrical objects, we also took the opportunity to engage with the adults, and talked about how Lotherton Hall was electrified relatively early, having previously only been lit by oil lamps and candles. The decision to electrify the house, taken by Colonel Gascoigne around the turn of the 20th century, was not an obvious one, and was complicated and expensive as Lotherton Hall needed to be able to generate its own independent electricity supply. Whilst it may have been more common at that time to have gas lighting installed, Colonel Gascoigne was keen on modern technologies, and also had central heating installed as well as owning a fleet of motor vehicles, so he chose electric lighting.

Read about what we did on the first day here!

 

 

 

The toaster, the hair dryer and the vacuum cleaner

The telephone and the vacuum cleaner.
The telephone and the vacuum cleaner.

What do these things have in common? Apart from the fact that they are all pretty ubiquitous electrical domestic appliances, they were all at Lotherton Hall to be handled and marvelled at (“it’s really heavy!”) by the young visitors to Old Science Week today. Some of these items were borrowed from Artemis, Leeds City Council’s artefacts loan service, by Dee Matthews, Lotherton Hall’s Learning and Access Officer, and we showed them to the children, encouraging them to work out what the less obvious ones were and compare them to their modern day equivalents.

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The surprisingly heavy hair dryer.

The hair dryer and the vacuum cleaner were fairly obvious, but the old toaster was slightly more problematic; on first guess it was usually identified as a heater. The advantage of using objects to engage with the idea of ‘old science’ is it can offer something to all visitors, and it encouraged all sorts of responses from curiosity to sharing stories. The objects will be at Lotherton until Thursday, and we will be encouraging children to think about how they use electricity at home, and what life would be like without it.

DSC00497At the same time, children can also participate in craft activities. Today this meant colouring in or making ice creams out of paper, cotton wool balls and lolly sticks – to connect in with the old ice cream maker we had on display, nearly always the most difficult object to work out – not to mention fascinating discussions about Disneyland and lightsabres. Over the next few days, other activities will include making paper lanterns, to tie in with the history of electric light at Lotherton Hall, and using plastic cups and string to make telephones.

And if these are conducted with more exciting conversations about Star Wars and My Little Pony, then so much the better.

Lotherton Hall hosts Old Science Week

P5.1 LH from south shortly after 1903 extension (2)
Lotherton Hall, c.1903. ©Leeds Museums and Galleries

In a few weeks’ time on Monday 24 August I will be over at Lotherton Hall to take part in our very exciting Old Science Week. This series of fun activities for kids visiting the house will run from Monday until Thursday 27 August, and has been devised by Dee Matthews, Lotherton Hall’s Learning and Access Officer, in conjunction with Steve Hutcheon, Leeds Museums and Galleries’ Science Learning and Access Officer. It ties in very closely with the themes of the ‘Electrifying the Country House’ project which we’re running at the University of Leeds: a key focus of our work is on electric lighting in the domestic sphere, and during this week children will have the chance to think about light and how we use it.

We’ll have a range of objects from the Leeds Museums and Galleries collection for children to look at and handle related to light, and Steve will demonstrate some kaleidoscopes. We’ll be making lanterns as well, which connects with the way some Victorian ladies made shades for their new electric lights; they thought lightbulbs were brighter and harsher than the gas, oil or candle lights they were used to, and wanted to soften the glare. I’ll be on hand also to talk about what people first thought about electric lighting when they used it in their homes if older children or parents want to more about the history of light in the home.

The activities will run from 10am to 4pm each day; for full details of how to get to Lotherton Hall and for price details, have look here and here.