Volunteers are vital to the continuing success of many a museum, the Sedgwick Museum is no exception and this week we are thrilled to introduce you to Darwin project volunteer and resident audio guide expert, Victoria Weaver. In this special feature she guides us behind the scenes at the Sedgwick Museum telling us about her work as a volunteer at the Museum and just some of the projects she has been involved with.
Hi everyone! My name’s Vicky and I’m working on the Darwin the Geologist exhibition. I’ve been here since October last year and I come in three days a week. You might think that that’s a bit keen, but I’ve been able to help out with the exhibition from really early on, which is really exciting. Basically, I do lots of the background research relating to an audio guide to accompany the exhibition. I write up what I find and report back to the exhibition team adding my own ideas and suggestions – I like to think that in some small way my work is helping to make the exhibition as good as it can possibly be.
I’ve looked at loads of different things for the audio guide, from national and international guidelines on how to make exhibitions and audio guides accessible to how to organise and run a focus group. I’ve researched different companies that produce audio guides for other museums and heritage sites to see what they can all offer (and how much they cost) and I’ve even had a brief foray into the weird and wonderful world of acting, or rather voice acting to be precise. All this research is important because the Sedgwick hasn’t done anything like an audio guide before, and my job is to gather as much information as possible to help the project team make the best decisions. Two of the most important and exciting things that I am helping with are the organisation of focus groups to evaluate audio guides, and making sure that the exhibition and the audio guide are as accessible as possible.
Focus groups are a great way to get feedback on a huge range of topics because they are more informal than interviews and include a range of different people in a group discussion. They are often used at the start of projects to gauge people’s opinions to a new idea. Because audio guides are new to the Sedgwick we want to know what YOU think of them, and get feedback on a couple of our own ideas including a range of different audio guides and sample audio scripts. We are hoping to run these this autumn, so if you are interested in taking part please get in touch with the museum (you can do this though the website www.sedgwickmuseum.org) and I’ll send you some more information.
It’s important to the Museum that the exhibition is as accessible as possible to as wide a range of people as possible. I got really excited when I was asked to work on this because it’s something I am really interested in. I was asked to contribute to the project brief on access, to make sure that these issues were addressed at the very start of the project. One of the groups I looked at particularly were those with a visual impairment since audio guides can often be especially useful to those who cannot use vision to access museums and heritage sites.
I also lend a hand wherever needed, and have helped write one of the Darwin quizzes for the touch screen interactive. I have also written three sample audio scripts for the audio guide. This was great because I got to research some of the specific objects connected to the exhibition and I got to use a huge range of sources including the many thousands of letters that Darwin wrote and received over his lifetime; (he was a VERY popular guy!).
As an archaeologist I’m used to working with MUCH smaller time scales, and I don’t know about you, but I find some of the creatures in the museum REALLY WEIRD. However, this exhibition on Charles Darwin is really interesting to work on. Doing the background research means I got to work on a whole range of different aspects of the audio guide and get to help the project team make the best exhibition possible…Oh, yes, I forgot, I also get to say I work at Cambridge University, which is always nice!
