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At the beginning of 2005 the Weald and Downland Open Air
Museum established an Interpretation department to formalise and develop the
process of communicating what the Museum is about to all our visitors. There are
many different ways of doing this at this particular museum from the guidebook
to the volunteers and staff you are able to talk to across the site. In addition
there are the more traditional text panels and audio commentary in some of our
buildings. Interpretation also covers how we choose to display each building and
workshop. When we rescue a building we then have to decide what period of its
life we choose to display at the Museum. We have to make choices about how the
building will be used and if it is to be furnished as a domestic home, workshop
or exhibition space. At the Weald and Downland we aim for excellent
person-to-person interpretation as the key way to communicate with our visitors.
We encourage direct communication between visitors and the people who work here
from our farm manager to our curator and everyone they may meet as they make
their way around the site. Volunteers make up the core of our workforce dealing
directly with the public in all departments. They need training, support and
supervision by our staff on a daily basis to make sure they feel prepared for
their role and provide the best possible service to our visitors. We do not
issue 'scripts', after all our visitors never ask the same question in the same
way. Instead we provide guidelines and information and encourage the individual
to communicate the work of the museum in their own words. Overall this approach
works very well and the benefit from the visitors’ point of view is the wide
range of volunteer's skills, experience and enthusiasm for the museum.
Interpretation is always a two way process of sharing information, opinions and
memories. All of us working at the Museum expect to learn as much from our
visitors as we hope to share with them. There is no standard conversation
between staff and visitors - you never know who you will end up talking to or
learning something new from!
The Interpretation department at the Museum consists of a full
time Head of Interpretation, two part time Museum Interpreters, our part time
Museum Gardener and a part time Woods and Crafts interpreter. But In reality
everyone who works with visitors is a Museum interpreter. Our main task is
communicating directly with our visitors out on site and demonstrating the
variety of skills and crafts that our forbears who lived and worked in our
historic buildings would have traditionally needed. The activities can range
from coppicing wood for firewood used in the buildings, gardening in one of our
seven period gardens, making cheese and butter by hand or brewing ale in our
Tudor kitchen. In every activity we are conscious of trying to experience how it
may have felt for people in the past to live and work in rural England as
authentically as we are able to and share this with our visitors. Often we will
be dressed in replica clothing of the period made at the Museum by staff and
volunteers as part of our Historic Clothing Project. Another example is our farm
manager and horseman work with oxen and shire horses to carry out their work
daily work and their knowledge and skills are uniquely interesting to visitors
for that reason. The museum carpenter and museum director worked on the
dismantling and re-erection of most of the buildings you see on site and so
again their experience is valuable and unique and we aim to share that with
visitors. At the museum we encourage a shared experience and a 'hands-on'
approach for all our visitors and often provide opportunities for people to have
a go themselves whether helping the interpreters to make the beds in our
Victorian cottages or learning how to plough with shire horses on one of the
formal courses we run throughout the year at the museum. We believe there is no
substitute for experience and the open air quality of the museum encourages us
all to experience the museum using all our senses - a visit to the Weald and
Downland is not just about learning a list of dry historical 'facts'.
As technology develops and our visitors needs change we will
respond accordingly to ensure our interpretation reflects these changes yet
retains the integrity of the work we do here.
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