My name is Bryony, the Museum Learning and Engagement Trainee and this blog is going to give you an insight to what myself and the Learning team are up to and what I learn along the way. Hopefully inspiring future generations of Museum professionals. This blog will be monthly updates of what I’ve been up to!
July really put me through my paces with working from home, new responsibilities and even a new exhibition!
Whilst it was frustrating to miss out on so many visits whilst working from home, it allowed me to get my teeth into a project of my own. I was able to handle the bookings for our Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. HAF is an initiative by the local council to provide food and activities for those who are eligible for free school meals. This included talking with customers, devising a booking form, booking taxis and creating information sheets all about how the days were going to run. It was great to put my organisational skills to good use and be able to take ownership of a project!
Don’t worry this wasn’t the only task! July gave me the opportunity to handle a booking on my own from start to finish (minus the delivery). After observing this and doing partial bookings it was great to get the first full booking under my belt and for it to go so smoothly. This let me use my customer service skills and I can’t wait to handle more bookings in the future, be it community or school groups. But you don’t get bookings without marketing your offer, so the rest of my week was full of creating databases, writing promotional material and organising the department's social media strategy. It was great to communicate via email with the community this month with it resulting in two enquiries for our reminiscence boxes made by our archive department. If they can’t come to the Museum we will go to them!
Once back in the office it was all steam ahead. The summer holidays had started, the museum was buzzing as as always it was time to make up all our take home activity bags. The first thing I did on my return was look at our brand new Factor Us In exhibition. Whilst I might be slightly biased, it was amazing! I got to see the hard work fleshed out and even my face on the wall of an exhibition. Very surreal. Naturally, I have been explaining in the Factor Us In exhibition as ‘Julie’ a few times and can still not get over seeing myself in the exhibition.
Another big task for July was access. After already filming our access video it was time to work on our visual story. Visual stories are great to give visitors an idea of what to expect from our Museum before they arrive covering all important details like facilities, lighting, sound levels and the list goes on! July allowed us to create and review the first draft of our visual story which is now being shared more widely to check we haven’t missed anything.
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