Amena arrives in the UK as a Syrian refugee. As part of her English language course, she visits a local museum, where she is amazed to learn that one of the earliest known language systems, cuneiform, originated in her native region 5,000 years ago. Back in college, the class produces a film for other English learners for the college and museum websites.
This is Amena’s first time inside a UK museum and she thinks about taking her children there.
This is not an unusual experience for an ESOL – or English for Speakers of Other Languages – learner. Museums provide an opportunity for students to improve their language skills and life skills, making connections to the place where they currently live and the place they call home.
ESOL learners are immigrants to the UK or those seeking permission to stay. Some may come as refugees or asylum seekers, and some – but by no means all – have only basic English literacy levels.
Many learn English on government-funded college courses, but museums may also engage with ESOL learners through community groups or religious organisations.
And while ESOL visits to a museum can be part of a curriculum’s language learning objectives, they can also be informally structured and may not even prioritise English language learning at all.
For example, one aim of the Magic Carpet storytelling sessions offered by National Museums Scotland (NMS) in 2015 was “to give families the confidence to use their home language in the museum”.
Diversification
For many museums, offering an ESOL programme can help attract hard-to-reach audiences and establish new partnerships.
“It was a valuable opportunity to make contacts with local education providers that we hadn’t worked with before,” says Jo-Anne Sunderland Bowe, a heritage education specialist who runs the British Museum’s ESOL programme and has also set up an ESOL network for museums.
They can also help museums widen access to and understanding of their collections. Last year Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth worked with a local charity and young ESOL learners to create a museum trail of objects they identified with, and curated a pop-up exhibition of their own objects.
Such work demands time, energy and funding, but the resulting resources or objects can be added to the museum’s collections. Any resources produced as a result of such work can also be used with other groups.
Many museums use core-funding to run ESOL services. Individual ESOL-related projects (such as NMS’s Magic Carpet World) may receive funding from bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Money can also come from funds for events such as Refugee Week. Hackney Museum in London was awarded money through the local authority from the government’s Controlling Migration Fund to increase knowledge about migration.
Elsewhere, Manchester Art Gallery provides monthly training sessions to ESOL tutors as part of Manchester Adult Education Service’s Talk English programme.
And the gallery also offers customised group ESOL sessions for £70.
Starting a programme
Museums rarely have a dedicated ESOL staff member, so programmes usually sit within community engagement or adult learning work.
The easiest way to start an ESOL programme is to make links with local colleges, as well as community groups or charities where there are already cohorts of learners.
ESOL tutors may need to be convinced that object-based learning can help language acquisition, so try to visit and talk to relevant staff. This will also allow you to build up a database of interested people who can be emailed regularly.
“I ended up getting to know a small group of mums in the Eritrean community who met at a children’s homework club,” says Bev Davies, who worked with ESOL learners at Salford Museum and Art Gallery and is now head of school for ESOL, Foundation and Supported Learning at Northampton College.
Other organisational networks are also important, depending on the area and type of museum.
Emma Winch, the heritage learning manager at Hackney Museum in London sits on the local council’s equality policy steering group, where she can raise ESOL-related issues there and learn about council initiatives.
“Manoeuvring ourselves into those conversations is important,” she says.
Museums can offer ESOL tutors training in how to use collections to further learning. They can also consider a regular or one-off ESOL focus group to elicit ideas, meet tutors and find out what they would find useful.
It is vital to provide downloadable risk- assessment forms and clear booking procedures are a must for ESOL tutors, who are very busy. Help with transport costs is also appreciated. Once inside the museum, a warm welcome is important, as are maps, and staff who speak English slowly and simply.
“Nine times out of 10 museum staff talk too quickly,” says ESOL consultant Poppy Szaybo. Staff training can be offered in this, perhaps as part of wider visitor services training.
London’s Kensington Palace, part of Historic Royal Palaces, offers training sessions for adult community group leaders, and sends ESOL tutors regular e-newsletters and invites to bi-annual networking events.
“It’s the first time many group leaders have visited the palace,” says Kim Klug, a learning producer in the palace’s events and partnerships team.
She values the resulting word-of-mouth publicity and estimates that the palace has about two free ESOL visits a week.
Encouraging groups to continue using the museum or return independently is difficult.
Kensington Palace provides learners who attend a group session with a discount card that allows them and a companion to return for £1 each. However, uptake of this has been low.
Research by M Shed in Bristol found that a third of teachers who visited with an ESOL group between December 2015 and June 2016 came back before the end of the year. The individual learners said they were happier visiting in a group, and none had plans to return with on their own or with family or friends.
Links
An evaluation report of an ESOL course run at Hackney Museum (pdf)
This is Amena’s first time inside a UK museum and she thinks about taking her children there.
This is not an unusual experience for an ESOL – or English for Speakers of Other Languages – learner. Museums provide an opportunity for students to improve their language skills and life skills, making connections to the place where they currently live and the place they call home.
ESOL learners are immigrants to the UK or those seeking permission to stay. Some may come as refugees or asylum seekers, and some – but by no means all – have only basic English literacy levels.
Many learn English on government-funded college courses, but museums may also engage with ESOL learners through community groups or religious organisations.
And while ESOL visits to a museum can be part of a curriculum’s language learning objectives, they can also be informally structured and may not even prioritise English language learning at all.
For example, one aim of the Magic Carpet storytelling sessions offered by National Museums Scotland (NMS) in 2015 was “to give families the confidence to use their home language in the museum”.
Diversification
For many museums, offering an ESOL programme can help attract hard-to-reach audiences and establish new partnerships.
“It was a valuable opportunity to make contacts with local education providers that we hadn’t worked with before,” says Jo-Anne Sunderland Bowe, a heritage education specialist who runs the British Museum’s ESOL programme and has also set up an ESOL network for museums.
They can also help museums widen access to and understanding of their collections. Last year Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth worked with a local charity and young ESOL learners to create a museum trail of objects they identified with, and curated a pop-up exhibition of their own objects.
Such work demands time, energy and funding, but the resulting resources or objects can be added to the museum’s collections. Any resources produced as a result of such work can also be used with other groups.
Many museums use core-funding to run ESOL services. Individual ESOL-related projects (such as NMS’s Magic Carpet World) may receive funding from bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Money can also come from funds for events such as Refugee Week. Hackney Museum in London was awarded money through the local authority from the government’s Controlling Migration Fund to increase knowledge about migration.
Elsewhere, Manchester Art Gallery provides monthly training sessions to ESOL tutors as part of Manchester Adult Education Service’s Talk English programme.
And the gallery also offers customised group ESOL sessions for £70.
Starting a programme
Museums rarely have a dedicated ESOL staff member, so programmes usually sit within community engagement or adult learning work.
The easiest way to start an ESOL programme is to make links with local colleges, as well as community groups or charities where there are already cohorts of learners.
ESOL tutors may need to be convinced that object-based learning can help language acquisition, so try to visit and talk to relevant staff. This will also allow you to build up a database of interested people who can be emailed regularly.
“I ended up getting to know a small group of mums in the Eritrean community who met at a children’s homework club,” says Bev Davies, who worked with ESOL learners at Salford Museum and Art Gallery and is now head of school for ESOL, Foundation and Supported Learning at Northampton College.
Other organisational networks are also important, depending on the area and type of museum.
Emma Winch, the heritage learning manager at Hackney Museum in London sits on the local council’s equality policy steering group, where she can raise ESOL-related issues there and learn about council initiatives.
“Manoeuvring ourselves into those conversations is important,” she says.
Museums can offer ESOL tutors training in how to use collections to further learning. They can also consider a regular or one-off ESOL focus group to elicit ideas, meet tutors and find out what they would find useful.
It is vital to provide downloadable risk- assessment forms and clear booking procedures are a must for ESOL tutors, who are very busy. Help with transport costs is also appreciated. Once inside the museum, a warm welcome is important, as are maps, and staff who speak English slowly and simply.
“Nine times out of 10 museum staff talk too quickly,” says ESOL consultant Poppy Szaybo. Staff training can be offered in this, perhaps as part of wider visitor services training.
London’s Kensington Palace, part of Historic Royal Palaces, offers training sessions for adult community group leaders, and sends ESOL tutors regular e-newsletters and invites to bi-annual networking events.
“It’s the first time many group leaders have visited the palace,” says Kim Klug, a learning producer in the palace’s events and partnerships team.
She values the resulting word-of-mouth publicity and estimates that the palace has about two free ESOL visits a week.
Encouraging groups to continue using the museum or return independently is difficult.
Kensington Palace provides learners who attend a group session with a discount card that allows them and a companion to return for £1 each. However, uptake of this has been low.
Research by M Shed in Bristol found that a third of teachers who visited with an ESOL group between December 2015 and June 2016 came back before the end of the year. The individual learners said they were happier visiting in a group, and none had plans to return with on their own or with family or friends.
Links
An evaluation report of an ESOL course run at Hackney Museum (pdf)