The first project I was involved in at London’s National Maritime Museum was Against Captain’s Orders: A Journey into the Unchartered – an immersive experience created in partnership with theatre group Punchdrunk Enrichment.
My job was to take children into the strange world of the museum stores, where navigational tools come alive and the ghost of sea captain Sir Francis Drake’s drum still haunts the corridors.
This was a unique and intense experience. I saw the children’s awe, excitement and occasionally tears as they exited through the gift shop. This ground-breaking project has hugely informed my practice as the museum’s family programmes producer.
Put simply, everything we do at the museum comes back to the sea and the sea is an exciting and frightening place. To reflect this the National Maritime Museum has to be challenging, dangerous and immersive.
When I say that our family-learning programme is challenging, I mean that it aims to explore difficult themes and to be provocative, even with a very young audience. The museum’s collection deals with uncomfortable stories of death, ownership, violence, oppression and cruelty. It is important to talk and discuss these sensitive and often contested histories with children and families and not shy away from such content.
There is a worrying view in the museum sector that families should be kept away from complex, dark or sensitive topics, which are deemed inappropriate for children. I have programmed activities around so-called adult subjects, including mental illness, the transatlantic slave trade and LGBT History Month for family audiences.
This work shows that programming for families around difficult or challenging content is integral to what the museum does. Being open about such topics helps families to start conversations in their own time that may have been difficult to broach before.
Maintaining a responsibility to our audiences’ wellbeing by “scaffolding” experiences and providing a safe environment allows us to talk openly about the realities of British maritime history.
Even very young children have a strong understanding of justice and fairness, concepts that can be used as a foundation for future learning about complex topics, such as the East India Company and the transatlantic slave trade.
The National Maritime Museum is a little bit dangerous. On many occasions I saw kids exit Against Captain’s Orders wipe their tears and announce to their parent’s shock “Can we do it again?”
Families come to a museum looking for an experience that they can not get at home or at school. They come for something memorable, and nothing is more memorable than a sense of danger. Don’t forget that Harry Potter has almost as many deaths in it as Game of Thrones.
During the museum’s family friendly LGBT History Month event, Out at Sea, children were accosted by a female pirate who shouted at them about the difficulties of cross-dressing. Not quite what might be expected from a family day out on a rainy Saturday, but they loved it.
Going against expectations is woven into everything we do. When building telescopes out of card and paper we added a spin by turning them into “Spyscopes”, which had to be hidden from view on pain of death. Some transformed into handbags while others turned into walking sticks. Visiting families may have certain expectations of a museum trip but it is still important to take them outside of their comfort zone.
Immersive is a word that is thrown around a lot in discussions about learning, theatre, galleries and art. More than simply a buzzword, immersive programming is a must for family engagement.
Museums and heritage sites are the closest thing people have to Doctor Who’s Tardis; they can take you anywhere and to any period of time. For young visitors, text panels and dark cabinets might not always be enough to transport them. Our collections come to life if they are intermingled with an element of drama, set-dressing and imaginative play.
All make-and-do activities are tied closely to the reason it would have been done historically, the museum’s mission statement or an imagined scenario. This is important because immersive experiences create deeper memories.
For example, the last Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (Stem) workshops we hosted were designed to encourage children thinking like top-secret engineers and create plastic bottle submarines for a mysterious agent.
We treat our family audience with the same respect as our adult audiences. We challenge this group by bringing them up close and personal with the true danger and awe-inspiring nature of the sea.
We hope that by creating safe spaces to explore challenging topics and developing truly immersive programming our families will be talking about their experiences long after their visit.
Sacha Coward is the family programmes producer at the National Maritime Museum, London, which is part of Royal Museums Greenwich
My job was to take children into the strange world of the museum stores, where navigational tools come alive and the ghost of sea captain Sir Francis Drake’s drum still haunts the corridors.
This was a unique and intense experience. I saw the children’s awe, excitement and occasionally tears as they exited through the gift shop. This ground-breaking project has hugely informed my practice as the museum’s family programmes producer.
Put simply, everything we do at the museum comes back to the sea and the sea is an exciting and frightening place. To reflect this the National Maritime Museum has to be challenging, dangerous and immersive.
When I say that our family-learning programme is challenging, I mean that it aims to explore difficult themes and to be provocative, even with a very young audience. The museum’s collection deals with uncomfortable stories of death, ownership, violence, oppression and cruelty. It is important to talk and discuss these sensitive and often contested histories with children and families and not shy away from such content.
There is a worrying view in the museum sector that families should be kept away from complex, dark or sensitive topics, which are deemed inappropriate for children. I have programmed activities around so-called adult subjects, including mental illness, the transatlantic slave trade and LGBT History Month for family audiences.
This work shows that programming for families around difficult or challenging content is integral to what the museum does. Being open about such topics helps families to start conversations in their own time that may have been difficult to broach before.
Maintaining a responsibility to our audiences’ wellbeing by “scaffolding” experiences and providing a safe environment allows us to talk openly about the realities of British maritime history.
Even very young children have a strong understanding of justice and fairness, concepts that can be used as a foundation for future learning about complex topics, such as the East India Company and the transatlantic slave trade.
The National Maritime Museum is a little bit dangerous. On many occasions I saw kids exit Against Captain’s Orders wipe their tears and announce to their parent’s shock “Can we do it again?”
Families come to a museum looking for an experience that they can not get at home or at school. They come for something memorable, and nothing is more memorable than a sense of danger. Don’t forget that Harry Potter has almost as many deaths in it as Game of Thrones.
During the museum’s family friendly LGBT History Month event, Out at Sea, children were accosted by a female pirate who shouted at them about the difficulties of cross-dressing. Not quite what might be expected from a family day out on a rainy Saturday, but they loved it.
Going against expectations is woven into everything we do. When building telescopes out of card and paper we added a spin by turning them into “Spyscopes”, which had to be hidden from view on pain of death. Some transformed into handbags while others turned into walking sticks. Visiting families may have certain expectations of a museum trip but it is still important to take them outside of their comfort zone.
Immersive is a word that is thrown around a lot in discussions about learning, theatre, galleries and art. More than simply a buzzword, immersive programming is a must for family engagement.
Museums and heritage sites are the closest thing people have to Doctor Who’s Tardis; they can take you anywhere and to any period of time. For young visitors, text panels and dark cabinets might not always be enough to transport them. Our collections come to life if they are intermingled with an element of drama, set-dressing and imaginative play.
All make-and-do activities are tied closely to the reason it would have been done historically, the museum’s mission statement or an imagined scenario. This is important because immersive experiences create deeper memories.
For example, the last Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (Stem) workshops we hosted were designed to encourage children thinking like top-secret engineers and create plastic bottle submarines for a mysterious agent.
We treat our family audience with the same respect as our adult audiences. We challenge this group by bringing them up close and personal with the true danger and awe-inspiring nature of the sea.
We hope that by creating safe spaces to explore challenging topics and developing truly immersive programming our families will be talking about their experiences long after their visit.
Sacha Coward is the family programmes producer at the National Maritime Museum, London, which is part of Royal Museums Greenwich