What’s Rebecca been up to?

Now this month, for a change, time hasn’t flew by as quick as usual as I’ve been laid up at home ill for a week and a half this month – it’s nice being back at work and able to do something productive again! (I will try my hardest not to be ill again this year). ‘Times are achangin…’ as we have our new Learning Team member now in post (Claire Scott) who started on Mon 30th March, so we’ll be all steam ahead once she’s found her feet around site. We’re also planning a few changes to improve our efficiency in the learning dept, in order to manage our increasing bookings and balance quantity & quality, so watch this space in the coming months as I start being ruthless! Lots of activities planned for the coming Easter holidays – including some unique ‘Headgear’  making, one of which I was forced into modelling for the newspaper (if it gets printed, you will understand why I was slightly embarassed!). AND!! Our brand new trail & leaflet ‘Wildlife on the Edge’ is being launched on Tues (7th April) which is an amazing resource that ‘new Claire’ will be leading on and developing in the future. Last week I attended & presented my ‘Family Friendly’ equipment at MAGnet (Museums, Archives and Galleries network) held at Constantine this time (what a place to find! it’s lovely but in the middle of nowhere!) and my toy drills, which has sounds effects and moves, with matching ear muffs&gloves, were especially popular and I hope that we can put them out on site, along with the other equipment I was able to purchase, sometime in the near future for families’ use. If anyone wants to ever give (constructive!) feedback on their visit or suggestions for the site, please do contact us and we’ll put it forward for consideration. Thanks!

find out more about Rebecca.

Sneak Preview: Geevor Then & Now

We are all preparing for the New Hard Rock Gallery exhibtion, and Jo W the curator allowed me to sneak in with my camera.  So here is a sneaky peek of us setting up the new exhibition entitled Geevor Then & Now!

The exhibition tries to highlight some of the changes that have taken place on the site over time. The photos look brilliant! There isn’t an opening date yet, but if we get it mounted and up in time in could be open tomorrow! Friday 27th March 2009. as soon as i have more details i will let you know!

Geevor Then & Now Coming Soon!

the sticky vinyl man putting up the finishing touches to the exhibition title

trial and error photo placement

checking captions

Guest Post: Melissa Cooper

One of our lovely student placements!

Hi, my name is Melissa and I’m also a first year history student at the University of Exeter. I have been working on a museum evaluation project over three weeks at Geevor to analyse the audio-visual elements it has to offer. We spent time looking at the audio-visual elements and developed a questionnaire to ask the public what they thought when they visited. Overall I thought the museum was great. It provided an excellent overview of the mining processes and I really learned a lot about mining in Cornwall whilst I was at Geevor. The Geevor film in the museum was excellent and it backed up the information I got on the underground tour especially. In general I thought that the museum was a great place to visit when coming to Geevor because it is good for people of all ages to learn about mining in an interesting and engaging way. Thanks to everyone at Geevor.

Guest Post: Ben Vidler

One of our lovely student placements!

My name is Ben and I am a first year history student at Exeter University. Through the public history module, I came to choose Geevor as the preferred site at which to work. Background research had identified Geevor as one of the last mines to close, surviving into the 1990s. When working at Geevor, I was assigned to the Hard Rock Museum, where I was asked to analyse the audio-visual elements around the exhibits, and evaluate how they aided in the conveying of information to the public. The most engaging and informative audio-visual aspects were very successful in passing on knowledge, and these were; The Lode Model, Big Bang to Lode animation, Stope Model and The Geevor Film. Through these audio-visual exhibits I gained an insight into the history of Geevor, the lives of miners that worked there and the processes that they carried out in the mining of tin ore. Overall, my visit was very informative and entertaining, and was aided well by the staff, especially Nick Thomas.

Student placements at Geevor

For the past 3 weeks we have had the pleasure of working with some students from the University of Exeter. The module in public history, taken by Single Honours students in their first year, explores the presentation of history in, for example, museums and heritage sites, and on film and television. A twenty-hour work placement in February/March is an integral part of the module… We were lucky enough to have 6 intrepid Geevorites working on 3 different projects.  We want to thank them all so much for all their hard work!

At the end of the project we forced them to do a presentation and even write a guest blog post.  They will probably be mortified that I am letting the world see their work, but I’m going to do it anyway… not because I’m evil, but because they are really good!

Ben and Melissa’s presentation

Adam and Dan’s presentation

Ellie and Abbie’s presentaion

Again a big thank you to Adam, Dan, Ellie, Abbie, Ben and Melissa!

Scrapheap Challenge

Cape Cornwall School

wins

Scrapheap Challenge!

Congratulations  Cape Cornwall on producing the overall winning water wheel for Scrapheap Challenge.

The top 3 teams from the week all winning T-shirts were

1st place

Cape Cornwall’s team C.C who completed the track in just  1.03.12.

Well done Charlotte Kevern and Chloe Flack!

2nd palce

Humphry Davy’s Team Squeels who completed the track in 1.22.19

Well done Amber Scott and Mary Davis!

3rd place

Hayle School’s Team Scrapfusion with their wheel Zanzibar which completed the track in 1.27.84.

Well done Thomas Berry, Dean Burdaky and Liam Broad!

The first place winners from Cape Cornwall also win a special Scrapheap Challenge trophy for their school.

Congratulations to all participants. The overall consensus being that they felt they had learnt a lot and had fun at the same time. Each will receive a certificate with the time or distance covered by their team’s wheel.

Scrap heap challenge was held at Geevor over the 9th to the 13th of March to celebrate national Science and engineering week. The challenge was to design and build a waterwheel out of scrap materials. The water wheel had to power an inclined tramway. The waterwheels were put to the test to a time test find the best pulling power up the tramway.

The competition runs every year and is open to Yr.7 students from Penwith’s secondary schools.

What’s Claire been up to?

Who’s Claire? find out more

Apparently I look goofy in this picture! the cheek! I was concentrating! its really difficult to take a picture of yourself when your dangling down a 100 year old mine shaft!

I’ve been running around like a headless chicken recently! It’s been a really hectic couple of weeks. I have been away on an e-marketing course, learning how to make Geevor’s website better.  Terms like API, Ajax, RSS, Mashup have been used, I dont know what half of them stand for let alone mean! I definately need to be more techno savvy. but some stuff is just gobbledygook to me. so i retreated to my old archaeologist ways (see where on google earth no7 post) …. Then I had a meeting with my supervisors in Exeter about the e-learning project…. then students from the public history course at the University of Exeter are completing placements at Geevor. The project I gave to two lovely students is to research content for the ‘info mines’ which are touch screen in Geevor’s new museum… Then I moved house!

Oh and I learnt how to hand drill during the half term workshops, which was very exciting. As ever I’m working on content for Geevor’s forthcoming e-learning website, I’m doing Victorian mining and Rocks and Metals at the minute. I have recently updated Geevor’s facebook fan page, it looks snazzy now. Also its National Science and Engineering Week this week, and Geevor is holding the annual Scrapheap Challenge! I haven’t been involved in this before, so I’m quite excited to be taking part on Friday! Building a waterwheel out of scrap sounds well fun.  so yes busy, and geeky.  honestly i used to be hip and trendy at one time.  I dont know what happened!

What’s Jo W been up to?

Who’s Jo W? find out more

27 times I counted our esteemed Chair of Trustees Bill Lakin saying ‘Ooo look at this, I didn’t know we had this’ as we began our clear-out  of  the most infamous object store on site – the ‘Strong Room’. This was countered by my ‘Eugh, what on earth is this?’. This room is in fact a giant walk-in fireproof safe in which anything vaguely valuable (and some things not so) had been dumped since about 1931. Technically a non-museum term, ‘clear-out’ is certainly the most appropriate. Little did we know what we had taken on when Bill, myself and Nick T, Assistant Curator decided it was the first move in our grand collection management strategy. Yes there were some really amazing discoveries (my favourite was the BBQ skewers from the old Geevor Gala halcyon days of the 1980s) but there was also a load of rubbish like three boxes of till rolls from the Reception till which was actually replaced last year. We cleared, and cleaned, and cleaned some more until finally we were left with a very clear and accessible storage room, with plenty of space to add some of our other treasures currently in other rooms onsite. More importantly Nick and I now had an idea what exactly was in this room  – since little existed in the way of an inventory. That’s our next move….Despite being very dirty and tired, this was a joy to complete.

I have also, in my spare time, been working on the next exhibition Geevor Then and Now which is a photographic exhibition portraying the changes in the site over the years. Gone are the days when the Curator gets to spend time selecting and carefully researching exhibition content. My job is more along the lines of chasing people, trying to blag cheaper prices for things and cleaning.  Bring on the spring!

What’s Rebecca been up to?

Who’s Rebecca? find out more

Been another busy month, as ever! The half term activities went well, though I must admit that I’m glad that I don’t have to continue putting on funny voices & sing the ‘Hammer & Crack!’ song again during storytelling too soon – too catchy!

It’s been rewarding to see some regular schools visiting us again this year and it’s lovely to see familiar faces of teachers enthusiastic about Geevor. Though it always amazes me how many new schools from the neighbouring districts can emerge from nowhere – and some really are in the middle of nowhere, which I discover when I’m trying to find them for their outreach sessions! So if you see someone looking lost in a back lane of Cornwall with a car loaded with rocks, mining tools and loan boxes, please point me in the direction of the nearest school!

Not only are we dealing with school visits, but we’ve got student placements from the University of Exeter. My lot have got a fun part – setting up and evaluating some play equipment to see if it enhances Geevor’s ‘Family Friendliness’ or not. Also, Geevor’s Scrapheap Challenge 2009 is looming ahead, so glue guns and plastic bottles galore! This year we’re hoping to have a Scrapheap Cup for the secondary schools to win, so we’ll see how that turns out -thanks Nick H! 😉

Plus, I’m hoping to get involved with the World Heritage Site Education Strategy for Cornish mining this year, and the ball has started rolling, so yet another exciting development to get involved in. Onwards March!

Geevor Needs You!

We need your help please!  We think our website needs updating, what do you think?

www.geevor.com

is it good? is it bad?  what can we do to make it better?  all opinions welcome!