Welcome to Geevor’s blog!

This is Geevor Tin Mine Museum’s blog.  The blog provides a way for us (Geevor’s staff) to let you know what’s going on at Geevor. Including current and upcoming events, our collections and even just for you to see what we do on a daily basis to make sure you have a enjoyable visit to Geevor.

why a blog?

At Geevor we believe in community and in the importance of the visitor experience.  The local community plays a unique part in the development of the Geevor’s museum.   Since 2001, Geevor Tin Mine has been managed by Pendeen Community Heritage, a village based registered charity. Blogging is a new way for us to interact.  Here anyone and everyone can interact and find out more about us at Geevor.

“Can’t Come. Don’t come. Won’t come.”

Visitor Studies Group Conference 2009

Last week I was up in Leicester for the Visitor Studies Conference (not to be confused with the distance learning MA summer school – the amount of people who still think I’m a student astounds me… I’m like Peter Pan, I will look and feel young forever!)

Anyway I was invited to take place in the marketplace of ideas by @jenniferfuchs the chair of the Visitor Studies Group, as there is a distinct lack of Cornish representation at these events.  I must add it was via twitter that the invitation was handed out, twitter is marvellous isn’t it?  anyway.  It was a really interesting event! It was nice to be immersed in evaluation again for a while.

The first speaker was Jocelyn Dodd, who discussed the fact that there are no simple solutions when it comes to researching the complexities of hard to reach groups and museums.  One of the delegates said during the course of the two day event; It’s not the groups that are hard to reach, it’s the museums that are hard to get in to. a valid point. Jocelyn asked how can the researcher play a part in the process of making the visitor feel welcome in museums?  Of course exclusion is a complex issue.  Maslow and his hierarchy of needs came up, as excluded audiences have strong tendencies to be at the bottom of the triangle.  I was looking at a blog post about Maslow’s hierarchy a couple of days ago (http://www.ruthstalkerfirth.com/user-motivation-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs) it was brilliant because it used an example of the Scottish Crannog Centre (where I used to work before Geevor- i do seem to work in unusual places) this blog claimed that ‘our needs and motivations have changed little since the Iron Age.’ I have a tendency to agree, we all want to belong, to feel safe and respected and it is exactly the same for ‘excluded audiences’.   Jocelyn commended the work of Tyne and Wear Museums for their mission being exclusively social rather then about their collections ‘to help determine their place in the world and define their identities’.   When it comes to researching hard to reach groups it is imperative to collect multiple perspectives to properly understand the context of these visitors and the impact visits to museums will have on their lives. You shouldn’t dive straight in to projects, it takes time to understand the context and to build relationships.

Maggie Esson from Chester Zoo discussed ‘Achieving Audience Inclusivity.  It was really interesting hearing a presentation from a zoo’s perspective. Plus she looked amazing! Exactly how you would expect a proper zoo lady to look!

By their very nature zoo discriminate their audiences, with high admission fees and not being well served by public transport make zoo’s inherently elitist.   There is also people who won’t come to zoo’s on principle.  Zoo’s are very aware of these reasons, but they are striving to be as inclusive as possible.  For Chester zoo, education is very important they don’t want to be seen ‘as a fun day out’.  That is not acceptable in the 21^st century, animals held in captivity is not ‘just for fun’.  Therefore zoo education is a central role aiming to influence peoples attitudes and behaviours, making zoo’s a catalyst for environmental change.   Maggie discussed a project with One Parent/ Gingerbread charity called ‘learning together’.  It looks like a fantastic project with zoo based workshops as well as work in the community.  Maggie discussed the sense of achievement when you see parents working together with their children.  This is a brilliant sensation, at Geevor I don’t get involved in the workshops, and I miss that interaction.  Chester zoo is quite lucky as it has an educational Research officer (Andrew Moss) so they are continually doing visitor research. I would love for Geevor to have a position like that, as it would be brilliant to clearly see the pros and cons of the work that Geevor does.  For this project the parents participated in focus groups and these conversations were analysed. It really did seem to make a strong impact on the individuals involved.   Maggie also raised the point that its quite ironic that zoo’s are trying to change public perceptions to be seen as more educational and museums are striving to become more fun.  I also participated in a workshop with Maggie and Andrew later in the day, which I will blog about in the next instalment…

Jo W’s chaotic month

June has been more than a little chaotic to say the least. We are now several guides down so I have been learning how to do the main underground tour for July and August. I love doing this and it’s a change of scenery.

We had Bish Bash Bosh do a theatre performance called Surfing Tommies here at the beginning of June. A good 40 people (see last month’s blog for note on numbers!) turned up – it was brilliant. It was on the tin floors in the mill. I was terrified we would overload the power supply the whole way through but all was well. Will certainly do more of this. Got into a bit of a panic though trying to lock up a million doors and gates with new Claire  Sat 11 at night in the pitch black….needed a strong gin when I finally got home.

Bill has been tied up writing a paper for a mining history conference which Claire R has been helping to organise for the last two years. Well done Bill and Claire, it went well I heard.

Nick and I took delivery of the 200 maps and plans that we have sent as batch one of the scanning and then had to prepare the next 300 to go……what a relief that’s over. Still, it’s always nice to see the lovely Richard who has probably been down every mine in the world.

I have been planning the next exhibition with the learning team…a photographic exhibition Wildlife on the Edge to tie in with the wealth of biodiversity on the site. We are having photos by professional photographers alongside runners up and winners of a photographic competition we are going to run. Super. Cant wait. Been speaking with BTCV and the Cornwall Wildlife Trust as well on various events.

In the middle of this chaos, I had a wonderful birthday celebration with lunch at the Porthmister Beach Café – the sun shone and St Ives was at its best. That’s it now, we won’t be back there till the summer tourists have gone!

On 22^nd we launched our campaign for public votes in the National Lottery Awards. Voting closes any day now, fingers crossed. PLEASE VOTE FOR US IF YOU ARE READING THIS. The link is…http://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards/shortlistitem.cfm?id_category=5&id_entry=72

June was clouded with some very sad news. Mike Lindley who has been a volunteer on site for years died suddenly. It was a great shock to us and to the team of volunteers whom he worked with every Wednesday morning on the archive project. Our deepest sympathy is extended to his family and he will be greatly missed.

Cape Cornwall School French Exchange art project

We had a brilliant day today with the Cape Cornwall School French exchange group. After a tour of the site, they produced some brilliant multimedia postcards using art inspiration gathered from around the site. Have a look!

Multi media postcardCape Cornwall French exchange grouppostcard

Get excited about Tin Mining! And the National Lottery Awards!

We’re very excited today! We have reached the semi-finals of The National Lottery Awards! The Awards are an annual search to find the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects, and they aim to celebrate and recognise the difference that those projects have made to people, places and communities all across the UK.

We like to think we did a pretty good job, HLF funding gave us the opportunity to initiate the Geevor Tin Mine Project. This Lottery funding has enabled the restoration of all two acres of buildings – some of which date back to the early 19th century – and the development of our new Hard Rock museum.    When the mine closed, the local council made the unusual decision to buy the site, recognising the importance of preserving such an important piece of Cornish and mining history.  And with the help of Lottery funding we are continuing to preserve the site for the future.  Its great that all our hard work has paid off! And even better that we’ve been recognised by the National Lottery Awards!

Geevor Tin Mine: Conservation of buildings and new Hard Rock Museum is competing against nine other projects in the Best Heritage Project category for the chance to win an Award and a £2,000 prize, and we need your votes to help us!

The three projects in each category with the most votes will progress to the final round of public voting, which will run from 3-14 August.   How cool would it be if we got in the top three!

It would be fabulous if you could vote for us, you can visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards, click on the Best Heritage Project category and cast your vote! Alternatively you can call 0844 686 2607 to register your phone vote.  Every vote counts, so we really appreciate your support.

In May I learnt about Slime…

Jo W’s belated month of May post.

In May I learnt about Slime…or to be more accurate, about The Slimes Plant. I had no idea of the whereabouts of this building, let alone any recollection of having set foot in it already…..testimony to the size of the Geevor site.

Bill led a small contingency down there and Nick T printed out some old photos to give us an idea of what it would have been like and off we went….

The older part of the building housed the Eastern Calciner (early 20^th C) which was all about roasting the ore to get rid of the arsenic and other sulphide minerals. Geevor clearly had good moral values even back then and unlike nearby Levant and other mines in Cornwall did not go in for mass extraction of arsenic (and hence the poisoning of young boys and men to collect the arsenic). I’m strangely obsessed with arsenic and shall return to this topic in a future blog. The Slimes Plant next door was a last chance saloon for those tiny particles of tin that had so far escaped processing. The waste from the Mill was processed here one last time to recover as much of the tin as possible. This building is amazing. Although some bits of equipment look a bit makeshift, a lot of this technology was cutting edge in its day. The rusting brazier and wooden seat at the end adds a human dimension as this is where the night shift man passed the hours.

By far the highlight of May was our Museums at Night event. We had 41 people – wow! Geevor never has 41 people turn up for anything!!! And we took them round several of the buildings that would have had a night shift when the mine was running. Although it will never be possible to recreate the sights, sounds, smells and activity of a working mine, we were able to offer the opportunity to visit the mine in the darkness and soak up the atmosphere….we made front page of the local newspaper, I was very chuffed.

A few days later I ran a ‘Behind the Scenes Tour’ as part of community history month. I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting anyone to turn up and had planned to be tucking into a Sunday roast by lunchtime. However, we had 17 people who I had to take round for almost 3 hours.,…I really enjoyed it but was totally exhausted by the end. Janet had to feed me chocolate to get me home.

Bring on June….. or July…

Ouch! my leg’s are hurting!

The climb down Victory Shaft this week was very cool, but thigh muscles are making themselves known now! Climbing down steep rusty ladders into the dark, deep unknown isn’t my usual day, even though I work at Geevor! Very glad I did it though, not glad that I looked down whilst I was still high up (or looked up either – many of the platforms the ladders were resting on were very mouldy!!). We travelled down to 3rd level and saw the top of sea level in the shaft, to where it is now flooded, and from the pump chamber clambered our way across the tram lines and across wonky planks, most the time in knee-deep muddy water. The colours are amazing though, one wall running with water was bright yellow, others stained by copper deposits, but the deeper down the adit, the more ‘rustules’ we saw – like red stalactites, though some had combined and gave the walls a rippled effect and there were some ‘rustule flowers’ or ‘chandeliers’, no idea what you call them, but were just an amazing sight! You don’t see those in mining pictures too often but hopefully Claire S will be produing some wonderful artwork based on them! The deeper down the adit, the lower the ceiling, until eventually, after about an hour and a half, we came to a metal gate which we had to clamber over and then… sunlight! and a beautiful day it was too! Though we had to clamber from the bottom of the cliff upwards, it was very atmospheric amongst the pinks with the water gushing down the cliff. At least now I can actually share experience with the children who visit!

Well, apart from the excitement of going underground, me and the Learning Team are steadily making our way through our workshops, trying to refine them and gearing up for the summer holidays which will be busy for everyone on site and it’ll be all hands on deck!

‘It’s not about technology it’s about people’ Part deux

Part 2

I’ve already had a mini rant about the audience and their reactions to user generated content at World Wide Wonder by the Museums Association.  This seems to be happening quite often Nina Simon has posted ‘Don’t Join the conversation if You aren’t ready to listen’ recently with her experiences of similar events. Online museum stuff should be engaging for the museums and its users, its not a pedestal to push the ‘we are the keepers of truth card and we dont want to speak to the likes of you’.  Anyway… So the content of the World Wide Wonder event was pretty full on, it was great to see different people talking about museums and the web.

There’s too much to discuss so I’m going to focus on the points that particularly interested me.

Matthew Cock’s welcome note suggested some tips for what we should be thinking about:

1. Do one thing really really well- what do we do best?
2. Have clearly defined audiences and clearly defined user needs
3. Use others peoples content and tools to enhance your site and vice versa. Don’t feel you have to host the conversations about your content, just link to them. E.g flickr competitions, blog debate and discussions.  Work with flickr. Don’t just use them.
4. You’re too close to it. in order to fully evaluate watch other people using your website. Even better, watch a disabled person using your website.
5. Engagement with your audience is about quality.

He also asked us a question Do you have a web/digital strategy for your museum? If not why not?   That’s a good point.  When I joined Geevor, there wasn’t a web/digital strategy despite Geevor having a website (please don’t look at it- its awful- I’m currently giving it an overhaul- then it will look and feel good hopefully…).  By the time I leave (2 and a half months agh!) Geevor will have a strategy for all facets of the web that engages with/in, hopefully which will continue to grow and evolve as Geevor grows and as the web audience changes too.

Jason Ryan – Head of User Experience at ICrossing UK.  Talking about IA for the distributed online experience. I have to admit I didn’t actually know what IA was…. But now I do! Jason also asked us whether we should be considering centralised and de-centralised web strategies?

Information architecture (IA)- series of site maps and the effective organisation labelling and layout.  Ahh now it makes sense. So  IA is a way of working- a toolbox of principles, guidelines and techniques.  Many museums see their website as the sum total of their online existence.  But every organisation exists in a broader network; through networks of links and conversations.  The question is to what degree we as museums choose to be part of those extended networks- through listening and engagement?  to what extent can we  develop our IA to embrace and optimise the flow.

So basically our audiences are changing, they are no longer passive consumers.  They are active, engaged and thirsty to collaborate. We need to change to suit their needs not our own.

Jason suggested at the moment there are three types of visitor to our museum websites:

1. I am looking for something specific
2. I am interested in a topic or theme
3. Inspire me

Jason also suggested three simple principles for success in broader networks

• Listen
• Be useful
• Be live

Next up was Anra Kennedy from Culture 24.  This was pretty cool.  Anra was talking about meeting the needs of the youngest online audiences.

Firstly Caboodle is now live! Why didn’t anybody tell me, and why wasn’t it tweeted to oblivion??

So museums face stiff competition when it comes to children’s time and attention. And what are they doing with their screen (not necessarily online) time?? Playing, communicating, creating and finding out.

The best place for museums to position themselves is in the finding out section of children’s time. So what do children find out and when?

• At home- unguided, informal, craze led, and interest led
• School- guided, time limited, formal, info led
• Homework- a combination of the two.

Children have a wide option of experiences open to them and they love sharing interesting content.  Anra posed the question why isn’t it happening with out content??

She provided a brilliant example of her daughter who was doing a piece of homework on Boudicca. By using google images her daughter chose an image that she felt best represented Boudicca, and what was it? this!

why wasn’t museum content chosen? Because its not visible enough!  Homework should be the quick win for the museum.  We definitely need to work on this!

Anra also discussed crazes that children are in too and these crazes are in a format that museum could try and adopt.

www.neopets.com ( I have to admit I used to have a neopet, I was an only child and my hamster had just died- I needed something- don’t judge me)  it’s a virtual pet community. All I can really remember is playing solitare with this blue dinosaur looking thing, giving me points to feed it, it was addictive for a while. I soon got bored and went to play outside in the mud (archaeologist through and through), but the point is the majority of people didn’t get bored and played for hours on end! Why cant children or in fact everyone be playing with museum content, museum games?

www.clubpenguin.com (its tag line is ‘waddle around and meet new friends’ fab) – club penguin is a safe and moderated virtual world where you are a penguin avatar in a continually evolving community.  What’s interesting about club penguin is that it has been far reaching.  Its everywhere! You tube, twitter, you name its there’s a club penguin waddling about.

www.moshimonsters.com – Moshi Monsters is a free online game for kids, in which they adopt a monster and look after it.  whats great about moshi monsters is that learning is at the heart the experience.  The child’s monster will create a series of puzzles that test everything from vocabulary and arithmetic to logic and spatial skills. It might actually be good for me to do, test the brain a little. My logic and arithmetic and my vocab for that matter and not up to scratch.

It wasn’t in my remit to work on games for Geevor.  But I think tapping into the crazes that children are in to, is something really worth looking into for museums as a whole.  Plus it would be fun to research- Anra suggests that if museums are going to tap into childrens games, the first thing you need to do totally immerse yourself! Cool. I would like that job.

A few good museum websites/games aimed at children are:

www.foodgloriousfood.org.uk/my-patch

www.chanel4.com/history

www.parliament.uk/bigben

Finally, the final talk of the day was by Carolyn Royston, Carolyn focused on working in partnership and the benefits and challenges she faced as the project manager of National Musuems Online Learning Project.  The title of the post ‘It’s not about technology, its about people’ is from Carolyn’s talk.  It was one of the most important lessons Carolyn learnt from the project. And from my experience I would have to agree. My job is to lead a collaborative project between Geevor and the University of Exeter. I have had to develop strong partnerships with internal and external stakeholders and work collaboratively within Geevor, with the local community and with several departments in the University of Exeter.  And what it comes down to is the people involved.  You need to effectively communicate with everyone all the time. This on occasions is exceptionally difficult.  Carolyn was faced with ‘so what’s this project actually about?’ by a partner involved a few months before the end of the project!  People and communicating with them are the key factor in the successful management of any project .

Some key points that Carolyn discussed:

• Project needs clear benefits and value for all involved.
• Clarity about what the project will deliver (and what it won’t)
• Capability and capacity clearly defined.
• Agreement on how you will work together
• Spending time on the partnership early on will benefit you throughout the project
• Legacy strategy and sustainability issues must be discussed
• Setting up clear lines of communication
• Understanding that milestones and deadlines have to be met otherwise they impact on everyone
• Gaining advocacy- being a project champion
• Gaining commitment- building commitment
• Partnerships require work- all the time.

(on a another note. The webquests are pretty good!)

A point that was left ringing in my ears is – a good project manager will lead your project but implementation and delivery is a collective responsibility.

There was also great talks by Areti Galani- Participatory media: one size does not fit all. Areti looked at the ladder of participation and asked key questions about who participates, what does it look like and what is its purpose.  Martin Bazley- understanding online audiences: how to evaluate your website(s) and why .  Martin discussed why we need to research are online audiences – basically because otherwise users don’t get what we are offering.  and Phil Poole- Enhancing websites on a shoestring budget (which I mentioned in Part 1).

Proper underground my lovers!

Well after being away for a wee while off camping I (Claire S) returned to Geevor just in time to have a VERY EXCITING MORNING. No really it was, I got the chance to go down Victory Shaft the main shaft that was used at Geevor before it shut. I should point out that this was a very rare oportuntiy for some of us here to go down the mine. This included climbing down 18 ladders to the third level up to where the shaft is flooded to.  A small exert of what was going through my head at the time ”right its going to be fine, I only have a small fear of heights/small spaces, don’t look up don’t look down and adopt a voice that makes me sound alot more nonchalant than I feel….what am I doing oh noooooo…..its okay not a problem don’t look up etc” .  As it turned out it was really cool going deeper underground, the light gradually disappearing and the old rusting metal pipes, dripping rock faces and wobbly ladders becoming more familiar scenery.  We were led on a tour going deeper along the main adit for the shaft. Off this there were loads of other mine workings of different ages dating from the 18th century. With low ceilings and water over the top of my wellie boots we made our down through mine workings that spanned over 300 years. One of the coolest parts for me was seeing in the rock where the miners had hand drilled into the rock to set the shot, showing which way they had been working from and the load they were following. This meant that as you travelled through the underground you could work out from the clues they had left behind what the miners had been thinking and how they planned their next moves.  Being no geologist I was only able to admire the colours of the minerals seeping from the rock face which were really astounding colours and made some very interesting formations. We finished the tour at the bottom of the cliff which meant that luckily we didn’t have to test our fitness getting back up the 18 ladders! ! It was an amazing 2 hours underground, could always do more if I were to join St.Just Mines Group although it was mentioned that they often abseil into shafts hmmm….. maybe one step too far for this slightly claustrophobic girl with vertigo!!

‘It’s not about technology it’s about people’

Part 1:

(the next part will be more about the content of the conference)

This week, whilst some lucky people back at Geevor got to go down Victory Shaft (I’m miffed that I missed it!),  I was up in London for the Museums Association World Wider Wonder: Museums on the Web event.

Now this event was really interesting.

It was the usual suspects and case studies being identified as good practice:

• The IMA for its transparency and all round goodness
• Launchball for its general awesomeness
• Brooklyn museum for all they work they do

That’s not what was interesting.  What was interesting was the audience and their reaction to these case studies.  The Museum Association has the ability to attract a diverse audience of museum professionals to its events, so rather then the speakers preaching to the converted, the web developers and the geeks, they were talking to curators, interpretation teams, marketing people, learning people and a mini selection of web people. I have to applaud the MA for this, it was really great to see so many different people listening to how useful the web can be to enhance what they already do onsite.

I got talking to some of the small museum members over lunch; the Cheltenham art gallery, the quilt museum in York and the Bournemouth Art Institute; the resounding point was “yes the case studies are great but how can we even attempt to emulate them when we don’t have the time, money or resources?”  this links to something I blogged about during MW2009- Small Institutions Big Dreams. The fact that small museums just don’t have enough resources to commit to engaging museum webery.

And low and behold Phill Poole pulled it out of the bag with his presentation on Enhancing website on a shoestring budget!  You can access his slides here

Another quite interesting thing came from the Q&A after one of the presentations…  a member of the audience believed their museum to be an authoritative keeper of knowledge and several people firmly believed that User Generated Content (especially wiki’s) goes against this authoritarian ‘we know the facts, and you don’t’ mentality.  Sorry that’s coming across as quite negative.  I don’t mean to, but it infuriates me when people believe that just because they work in a museum, they therefore are a keeper of knowledge.  Increasing access and audience engagement is really important to me.  Museums are well on their way to shaking off the highly negative stereotypical view that they are quiet, revential and un-welcoming, perceived as an old building with an imposing appearance, full of fuddy duddy curators who waffle on about boring stuff.  Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, I know that, but museums believing that User generated content isn’t acceptable to their core message, goes against that fact: everyone is entitled to an opinion! There are multiple perspectives to every story especially when it comes to artefacts.  Just the facts is the knowledge so to speak but the interpretation is open to just that interpretation.

Word for the day- Palimpsestic

A palimpsest is a document that has been reused by writing over the original writing, sometimes by many times.

I discovered this new word whilst being given a tour of the old slimes plant by Bill.

The buildings at Geevor show layer upon layer of use and reuse that reflect the changing techniques and fortunes of Tin Mining- they are Paimpsestic. I would feel even cleverer if it had not taken me so long to work out the correct spelling so I could check it out in the dictionary.

Luckily for the public, they were also invited in for one of Bills tours of the slimes plant and other normally unseen buildings. Bit of a difference though, as these tours were held at night. All I can say is they are braver types than I.