#thegeffryemuseum

My role as project assistant at the Geffrye Museum in the learning team has been such an exciting one so far! As part of working towards my Gold Arts Award; I had the responsibility of independently managing the Saturday part of our Takeover weekend. This meant planning the event beforehand and running the community takeover event on the day.

This involved programming 2 family workshops, 1 family digital trail and using our temporary exhibition space to have a photo booth, an object handling station, community film projections and an interactive family artist wall.

Planning the day beforehand involved programming workshops which worked well with our community partnerships. For example, we had been working with a local youth film making group who had worked with our team here at the museum to produce a film documenting the history of tea. I programmed a tea making workshop where families were able to follow recipe cards or make their own concoctions of different flavour loose leaf tea. Masala chai tea and orange and cranberry tea to name a few!

The planning of the event also involved liaising with artists, ordering materials, contracting learning facilitators to run the events and making sure everyone knew what their role was. I also got to learn a lot of great new skills such as completing risk assessments and organising people on the day to make sure everything ran smoothly.

The highlight of this entire experience was being thrown into the deep end with this project and being able to be independent when programming a whole day of family events. This is a great skill that I will definitely be using in the future! Another highlight for me was feeling so happy seeing families work together and being really happy with what they made and their day out.