Sarah Cowie
Museums Education Officer
Pre-opening Consultation
Helen Bleck
Heritage Resources Development
Officer
Post-opening Consultation
John Gray Centre
Haddington
Opened March 2012
Heritage Lottery Fund Stage 2 Submission 2008:
• Audience Development Plan
• Education Plan
• Evaluation and Monitoring Plan
• Access Plan
Key audience
Children and Young People
Challenges:
• Centre was to represent all of East Lothian but would young
people at other end of county be interested?
• There were no archives currently open to public in East
Lothian, no museum in Haddington, current library was very
small, and there was no building for us to reference!
• Centre was being spoken about as 'cultural and heritage
venue' – not very young people friendly
• There was just me to do the consultation!
4 types of consultation with children and young people:
• Questionnaires
• Focus Groups
• Worksheets for children to complete in our
museums/libraries
• Revisiting Collections sessions
Now it's your turn...
1. Mind map or drawing about what would make the
'perfect' John Gray Centre
2. Discussion:
'What makes you proud to be from ...',
'What should we include about ... for tourists?'
'Which topics would you like to see in the
museum?'
3. Revisiting Collections:
Responding to questions about unknown objects
Revisiting Collections
What do you want to know about it?
Why have you chosen this item?
Your Object
What do you like
and dislike about it?
When have you seen or
used an object like this before?
What is important
or interesting about it?
What did we discover they wanted from the Centre?
• Friendly, welcoming staff
“Don't kick you out because you're a teenager”
• Gift shop and modern look (“like Ikea”)
• Those in Haddington were most likely to visit
“It'll be amazing to have a museum we can just walk right into whenever
we want”
• Different ways of bringing history of local area to life
“Older people from the community should sit and tell visitors about the
past so they get a real sense of what happened in East Lothian”
• ‘Interactive' or 'stuff you can touch'
“Provide magnifying glasses so you can see things bigger and better”
Suggested Museum Topics
Weapons
World War Two
Supercars
World War One
Animals
William Wallace
Old cigarettes compared to
new cigarettes
Ancient Superstitions
Titanic
Scottish Music
Scottish football
Revisiting Collections
What we discovered:
- Young people were drawn to objects
that they could connect with their prior
knowledge or experiences
- Colourful objects were the most popular
- They were interested in the person
behind the object
- Session made them more interested in
museums in general
“Grandad has a similar thing. The
engraving on the back is very interesting. I
have chosen this item because it looks
interesting and colourfull. I like the carvings
on it and the colour.”
In the run-up to opening ...
Animating John Gray
A project with East Lothian secondary
schools ...
Did you know about the John Gray Centre?
Help us tell the story of John Gray
Animating John Gray
• Told the story of John Gray through
interactive drama
• Asked the children to retell the
story their way, using animation
• Ran a competition on YouTube to
find the film that told the story the best
• Showed the films and artwork in our opening exhibition
• Invited the participating schools to the opening day
180 S1s (11–12 year-olds) took part
Feedback was lively!
They definitely knew about John Gray and
the JGC afterwards
http://www.johngraycentre.org/learning/pr
ojects/past-projects/my-john-gray/
What we learnt:
• Giving the children something to contribute
made them more interested in the Centre
John
(Not)
Gray
• They all picked up on very different things
about the story of John Gray
• They responded to parts of the story we didn't
expect, and almost every group had a different angle
• Giving them the freedom to create their own
animation resulted in much more creative and lively
retellings than anything we could have produced!
Since opening ...
New resources for visiting children:
 mascots  activities  detective  passport  website 
Trials with schools to:
• Get a sense of what works and what
doesn't
• Get ideas and suggestions for what
they'd like
Patchy the (not Gray)
squirrel – named by local
primary pupils
• Spread the word that the resources
are available
An original activity sheet
Revamped activity
sheet, after feedback
3 stars (yum) and 3 wishes (lightbulb
moments)
 Museum Detective: booklet or cards? 

 but bigger
text, fewer
words, more
writing space
Pointless
Answers spoil it!
What we learnt part 2:
The children wanted:
• More activities
• Even more variation in difficulty/ease
• Bigger text
• Specific tasks
• Detective booklet more popular with groups, cards more popular for
individual visits
• Lots of ideas and suggestions for the museum and main exhibition as a
whole
• Lively suggestions for Friday afternoon activities
We need to:
• Be very specific about what we want them to report on
• Give them the opportunity to freestyle feedback as well – as an extra
• Trials like this are useful for the schools and enjoyable for the children,
as well as giving us helpful feedback, and we will structure more
activities around this kind of thing
Get in touch!
Twitter: @JohnGrayCentre or @ELMuseumService
Facebook – John Gray Centre
www.johngraycentre.org
Email:
hbleck@eastlothian.gov.uk
scowie@eastlothian.gov.uk