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!