At Forty Hall we celebrated ‘Kids In Museums’ National Takeover Day by inviting the whole of Year 9 from The Latymer School to ‘Takeover’ Forty Hall. 180 Students worked in groups of ten on the 25th and 29th November to complete challenges to do with all aspects of running Forty Hall, looking after visitors and putting on a programme of events.
One group designed a new Audio Tour for visually impaired visitors for example, one proposed a new event keeping to a specified budget and ensuring it was appropriate to their target audience, and one, working alongside the Learning and Conservation Officer, went to Lavender Primary School to set Year 1 pupils up with a wormery and gave them a presentation on its purpose and how to maintain it.
A teacher from Lavender School commented that ‘the children were really excited, (it was) a lovely thing for the children to be involved in and it is a valuable learning opportunity.’ The Head of Year 9 at The Latymer School said the 29th was ‘a brilliant day!’.
Here is footage of some of the students working on their tasks, shot and edited by the students themselves. You can see photographs and final outcomes on the Forty Hall website at https://forty.live.nutesting.co.uk/gallery/forty-hall-estatenational-takeover-day-2/images/, and many of the students’ ideas have been put into practice at Forty Hall already, for example:
• We have developed a new Minecrafting Forty Hall session for Primary classes which focusses on their maths, history and ICT skills and has been very popular with pupils
• We are currently developing a new exhibition for partially sighted visitors using the idea of reliefs that can be handled in partnership with RNIB
• The Volunteers’ Thank You event was carried out for our Parks and grounds volunteers and they loved the giant card made by students