City senses: Hackney jobseekers given new direction at Museum of London
21 February 2007
A group of long term unemployed young adults from Hackney have been gaining valuable hands on work experience at Museum of London, while also having bags of fun and making new friends.
City Senses, a new HLF funded project, challenges the team to create activity bags for school groups with special educational needs (SEN) to use on visits to the museum, which aim to help them explore London’s past through the five senses. The official handover of the activity bags from the group to pupils and teachers took place on 15 February at Museum of London.
Two sorts of bags have been crafted, one Roman and one Medieval, to be used by pupils and teachers on self directed tours of the relevant galleries.
The young adults have spent three months carrying out a variety of tasks to compile the multi-sensory contents, all designed especially to help pupils engage even further with the life and times of each period. These include working with a sound engineer recording battle sounds, Latin words being cried out, Cockney calls and noises from Roman markets that the school children can replay evoking the sounds of the times.
Participants made masks of Roman Gods, Anglo-Saxon capes, Roman centurion belts, and Latin inscribed wax tablets, to be worn and felt as pupils wander amongst the displays. Smelly sensory delights such as wafts of herbs and spices reminiscent of Roman times have been cooked up for pupils to smell in the museum’s Roman kitchen.
Lucie Fitton, project manager comments,
'Being unemployed is not a label, it is a situation that most of us have been in at one point or another in our lives. All the participants of City Senses began to take on roles, whether that be the researcher, the administrator, or the craftsman. In finding roles that suited their skills and characters, their respect for themselves and one another grew and we were able to achieve these fantastic multi-sensory activity bags.'
Members of the group enjoyed the challenges set them and will take away a wealth of knowledge. Erron Hinds, aged 19 comments,
'As well as learning a lot of crafts and creative skills and techniques, we also discovered how SEN children use senses differently - how difficult things like walking upstairs are for them and how important touch is.'
Misita Marshall aged 22 adds,
'The City Senses project has improved much of my confidence, recognised my potential as a group leader and team player. Also it brought out my creative and imaginative side.'
Children with special educational needs may have audio, visual or verbal impairments. Working through their other senses allows them to express themselves and communicate with others, as traditional teaching practices do not work. This greatly improves their learning. The contents of the bags have been developed with SEN teachers to ensure that pupils can make the most from their time in the museum.
Among the many practical crafts enjoyed were sewing, modelling, drawing, painting and product research. Time was spent outside the museum purchasing items needed to make the objects and researching ideas in Museum of Docklands and Tate Modern.
As the project came to a close a drop in day was held to help the group update their CVs with their new skills and experience and leave City Senses with bolstered self esteem and renewed confidence in finding interesting work.
For press images and enquiries contact:
Marian Williams
tel: 020 7814 5502
email: mwilliams@museumoflondon.org.uk
Note for editors
- HLF - The Heritage Lottery Fund enables communities to celebrate, look after and learn more about our diverse heritage. From our great museums and historic buildings to local parks and beauty spots or recording and celebrating traditions, customs and history, HLF grants open up our nation’s heritage for everyone to enjoy. HLF has supported more than 18,600 projects, allocating over £3.6billion across the UK.
For more information on the Heritage Lottery Fund, please contact Alex Gaskell, HLF Press Officer, on 020 7591 6047.