On Friday, November 20th Museum’s around the country handed over control of social media pages, websites, blogs, and exhibitions to young volunteers. The annual event is organised by the Kid’s in Museums charity and this year The Devil’s Porridge Museum partnered up with Moffat Primary school handing over their Animal’s in War exhibition and social media accounts to the pupils.
The Museum been involved in a number of takeover days in the past working with a mixture of local schools and other youth organisations but with the pupil’s unable to visit the Eastriggs site this was a takeover day with a difference. “Takeover days have always happened on site in the past … but with visitor numbers being limited and the need for social distancing we knew we needed a different approach.” Said Judith Hewitt, the Museum Manager.
The Museum has developed a number of innovative ways to engage with visitors unable to travel to Eastriggs including a Museum podcast and digital objects sessions, as well and the virtual tour available on their website. Most recently, they have been delivering assemblies in schools though video links. “This is really how we developed the link for takeover day, last week I delivered an assembly to Moffat primary based around our Animals in War exhibition. The pupil’s were so interested that we decided to loan the whole exhibit to the school until Christmas and they took over our social media to upload photos of themselves setting up the display around the school.” explained Museum Access and Learning officer Steve Bogle.
There are lots of ways for youth people to become involved with the Museum. Apart from takeover days the Museum has a youth council which meets either in person or online once a month, a regular weekly programme of family friendly clubs ad activities, and are currently preparing to run a podcasting and QR code workshop to help young people expand their digital skills. For more information on any of the Museum activities email [email protected] and maybe next time you will get to takeover his job on Takeover Day?
