Ecology goes- Wild About Birmingham!

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Lynsey

A few posts ago I introduced an exhibition Ignite, our Young People’s Forum are working on for the British Ecological Society’s ‘Festival of Ecology’. Now that spring is finally here it feels even more appropriate that we should be turning our attention to the great outdoors!

Ignite have spent the last few weeks working hard to get all their text and images for the exhibition to the designers, and also came up with a new name for it, ‘Wild About Birmingham! Here are a few of the latest concept designs to give a flavor of what the exhibition will look like.

There are four zones to the exhibition. One focuses on Forests and Gardens.

The introduction and welcome board.

One zone focuses on Food and Agriculture.

We are really happy with how the exhibition is starting to look! In fact there were several cries of, “It looks a lot better than I thought it would!” at the last Ignite meeting! The next stage is to create a whole range of family friendly activities to run alongside the show. Ignite have come up with all the idea, now it’s up to me to buy everything while they’re off doing exams! Good luck to all of us!

A Pirate Story Aarrrr!

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Lynsey

We are all getting in the Pirate mood here at Thinktank as we look forward to our summer extraveganza, ‘The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists!: The Exhibition’. The exhibition is packed full of the Aard man Animation sets used in the film (of the same name) as well as interactives, dressing up and even a model Dodo from Oxford University Museum of Natural History. To find out what a Dodo has to do with a Pirate crew you’ll have to watch the film!

As part of our Piratey celebrations we will be running Pirate themed storytelling all summer. To help us come up with the best story possible we invited a group of our Season Ticket holding families to come and write it with us. You may remember we did a similar project with our We Made It Story and it was so much fun we decided to do it again, though without creating a book this time!

Once again we worked with the brilliant storyteller, Anna, who led the group on an adventure to create the characters and plot line for our story. The kids (and adults!) took part in a whole range of arts and crafts, singing, acting and game playing to get the creative juices flowing. Check out some of their creations below!

: The crew with their Pirate characters!

: Thunder Guns the cannon master!

: An impressive playdough sea monster!

The families were wonderful to work with, and reminded us how lucky we are to be surrounded by people who want to give us their time and get involved in our work. Look out for the story once it launches at the end of the month!

The Festival of Ecology

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Lynsey

It’s a term you’ve probably come across and think you know what it means but…what exactly is ecology?! Well this year is the centenary of the British Ecological Society (BES) and they want everyone to find out through their ‘Festival of Ecology’, a programme of events taking place all over the country.

Being big fans of the natural world here at Thinktank we decided to get involved in the Festival and celebrate the ecology of our very own city, Birmingham. But instead of the museum staff putting together an exhibition we’ve handed over all control over to our newly established Young People’s Forum, Ignite!

Brainstorming in the first meeting!

Ignite are made up of 17, 16-20 year olds from across Birmingham, all working together to produce a Pop-Up exhibition and range of family activities that will go on display this summer. In fact, the exhibition will be traveling all over the city to some of the sites of Birmingham Museums Trust like Aston Hall and Soho House (see full list of dates). Our friends over at Blakesley Hall have been exploring the ecology of their site already and are looking forward to the exhibition visiting them.

So what is the exhibition about? Well, ecology of course, but in particular the group chose to focus on how humans have shaped the ecology of the landscape around them. The displays are split into four key zones; Canals and Ponds, Gardens and Forests, Food and Agriculture and Urban Wildlife, all features found in Birmingham.

So far, Ignite have been working hard carrying out lots of research, writting all the text for the exhibition and choosing lots of images. We were also joined by three scientists from the University of Birmingham who came to tell the group about their own research in areas relating to the exhibition.

Spot scientists who’ve joined the forum!

Dr Ian Thornhill and Prof Rob Mackenzie talking with their groups

The input of Ian, Rob and Emma has been invaluable in making sure the exhibition contains up-to-date research from local universities. In addition, it was wonderful for the group to meet local academics that they would never usually come into contact with.

The group are currently planning a range of exciting family activities as we wait for the exhibition to come back from the graphic designers. We can’t wait to see what it looks like!

So what is ecology?! Well you’ll have to come along and find out!

The Finished Storybook!

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Lynsey

A very quick post to say… our beautiful new storybooks are here! This project, to create a children’s storybook set in the We Made It gallery and with local children, has been many months in the making so it is wonderful to finally hold the finished product. The books will be available for visitors to borrow for free as part of our new We Made It Parent Packs, from the 16th of February 2013.

Open Book

Story Book!

Story Book Illustrations

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Lynsey

With the We Made It Gallery nearly finished lots of the other projects we have been working on are also reaching completion, including my favourite one, the story book project!

In my first post about this project I explained how we had held a story writing day with a group of local families, storyteller, Anna, and illustrator, Rosie. Since then they have both been hard at work turning all the wonderful ideas that came out of that day into the finished book. Although we are only a few weeks away from the finished product I thought I’d share a few of the illustrations that are in the book, as well as some early sketches to show how they developed.

Rosie began by designing each of the characters, first in pencil and then in water colour.

Sketching the front cover

You can see how the sketches develop through these drawings of the main character Jem!

An early sketch of the main character Jem

An early sketch of Jem

The completed colour version

She then created a rough storyboard and began arranging the characters into scenes based on the text created by Anna. Here is one of the heroes of the story, Tiger, in early sketches and the finished scene.

An early sketch of the tiger in pencil

The finished illustration on the page

These scenes have all come together to create the finished book! It is now our task to re-create this digitally, with the text in place, to send for printing.

Watch this space for the finished product!

Thinktank’s Kids in Museums Take Over Day

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Lynsey

Meet another group of We Made It participants, the Take Over Day team!

Kids in Museums Take Over Day is an annual event which aims to encourage museums to involve kids in their work. We decided to use the day a few weeks ago to host a group of children from a charity called The Feast and involve them in designing one of the new family activities for We Made It.

The activity is called Sense Station, a trolley that will allow visitors to handle replicas of objects on display in the gallery and try out demonstrations and experiments that relate to We Made It. The idea is that if kids are involved in designing the activity, then it will be even better for the families that ultimately come to use it. It’s a lot more work for me but so so worth it!

We, of course, started the day with a behind-the-scenes visit to the We Made It Gallery which, at the time, was very much still a building site! There were, however, a few interactives already in place to try out. The unanimous favourite was this one, a spring interactive which is a lot of fun to play with.

Spring Interactive

Something I always want to do when I visit a museum is open up the cases and find out what the objects feel like! Of course, to protect the objects, this isn’t possible so our next task was to choose replica handling objects that will go on to the trolley. I re-created a selection of the object cases from all over the gallery, using photographs of the objects, and asked the group, ‘if you could reach inside the case and pick out an object which would it be’?

Chosen Objects

In total they chose just over 30 objects and provided the reasons for those choices using post-it notes, as shown above. It is now my task to find as many of these objects as possible! I’ve already started my search by buying this beautiful Agate slice to replicate the ones on display in the Treasure section of the gallery.

Agate Slices. Handling object (top) and objects for exhibit cases (bottom)

The group’s final task was to try out some prototype activities and demonstrations, and provide feedback on them. All are related to exhibits in We Made It and are designed to help our visitors learn more about the key themes of the gallery. The feedback and ideas they suggested have been really helpful in improving these activities to make them work for our visitors. A big thank you to all the participants and The Feast (who have Blogged about their visit as well). I can’t wait to show them the finished product next year!

: Trying out Demos

: Identifying Minerals

: Testing the Light Box

: Kenneth and the Cow!

Writing a Children’s Story Book

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Lynsey

A long time ago (in fact in my first post on the Blog) I mentioned that the We Made It project was about much more than just a gallery re-development. On our journey we have worked with the Natural Science Volunteers, the Walking for Heritage group and the Science and Heritage Career Ladder Volunteers. Lots of people participating with the museum!

This week was the turn of four wonderful families, with 6 children between them, to spend a day with us creating a children’s story book! Why I hear you ask? Well this book will form the basis for new family activity packs for the We Made It gallery and our story for live storytelling next year. We decided to make the best story possible we should write it with children (it’s for them after all!). To achieve this ambitious task I recruited an illustrator, Rosie, and a storyteller Anna, and together we created an action packed day of story creating.

We started by coming up with the hero of our story, a character named Jem who visits the We Made It gallery at Thinktank with her grandpa. Just like Jem we explored the gallery too, though our visit was ‘behind-the-scenes’ of course!:

In the We Made It Thermal House

We reached the Tree of Wood in the Gadget section of the gallery and decided that Jem’s adventure would begin here as she used the tree to travel into a magical land!

To help us come up with ideas we made some music together using lots of different instuments:

Making Music in We Made It

We then headed back to our classroom to do lots of drama and art to come up with the other main characters for our story and create the magical land that Jem travels to. We explored man-made objects, textures and materials by creating rubbings and prints (see pictures below). These will be directly used by Rosie to create the illustrations for the book.

I can’t tell you any more as that would give away the story! However, I can say that it is far better than anything we at the museum could have come up with alone; the imagination of children is amazing! Rosie and Anna will spend between now and February pulling the ideas together into the finished book ready for printing.

Thank you so much to the families who participated. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and we look forward to showing you the finished product!

: Printing with Paint

: Yimga and her Object

: Exploring Man Made Materials

: Getting Arty!

: Looking at Materials

: Making Plasticine Models

: The Group!

The Final Completed Walking Trail!

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Lynsey

Slow Boat and the Walking for Heritage Team

Slow Boat and Walking for Heritage Team

The blog has been heavily dominated of late by our Walking for Heritage project. I promise I will stop writing about it soon! Ever since our lovely young people created their walking trail we have been working hard to re-make their prototype into a version we can publish. Only very minor changes were needed as the prototype itself was of a really high quality and had some wonderful, original features.

Take a look at the final version at the link below (its sadly too large to up-load to the Blog!)

www.thinktank.ac/walking_for_heritage

We will now get some paper copies into the leaflet holders in our galleries and make the trail available on our website. All that’s needed then is for people to get walking! If you’re looking for something to do in Birmingham why not check it out and let us know how you got on!

Another Walking Map Update!

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Lynsey

After a LOT of messing about I have (hopefully) improved on the Walking Trail mentioned in my last post. I have also used a different piece of software called Tripline to make the trail, to see which is the better tool. Tripline looks really slick but lacks some of the features of Google Maps. Take a look and see which you prefer!

View Walking for Heritage in Historic Digbeth in a larger map

Walking For Heritage Online Trail

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Lynsey

A few weeks ago I worked on a project to create a walking trail around Digbeth with a group of young people (you many remember I mentioned it a LOT!). Well although the co-production side of the project is finished I am still working hard to get the trail published both online and in paper leaflets. Below is the first draft of an interactive google map showing the walking trail and featured landmarks. I’m hoping the young people who worked with me on the trail will take a look at it and add their comments! I’m wondering-

Is there enough text information about each landmark?

Should each image have a border around it?

Are there enough directions to help people find their way around the route?

Is there anything else they would like to add?

Thanks guys!