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Interview with Derek Brown - Science Theatre Technical Manager

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BS: Another thing that I've noticed is that the exhibition space is fairly fixed while the science theatre is fairly fluid. Can you say what that's like to manage that kind of area.

DB: Well it tends to be - usually we'll have one theme in the science theatre - it's not every week but the maximum we tend to have is one theme in the science theatre, something in the lab and something in the planetarium. And - those tend to be fixed for a week. So, what we'll do is we'll have to - because our storage area isn't here it's in another place, we have to get the props in, set them up, which is usually on a Monday morning first thing for that particular week. Now, occasionally if something isn't booked they'll stick two days of something on at the end of the week. Which means we have to take that down and put it back up. As far as managing it, at the moment we - there's three of us work there and we tend to work very well together. There's not a huge amount of problem in it, but I don't, I don't particularly want to take things out and put things up 3 times a day but, we tend to - it once the thing is set it's set for the week. So if there's a storytime in the - in the planetarium it'll run for the whole week. So it's set it up on the Monday, and then that'll last through to the Friday. Same as the science theatre or lab, the lab this week, the (Orrery) workshop starts on Monday, that'll last to Friday. But what we've got to do then on Friday is we have to take everything down because the show - shows for the weekend are different from the ones on during the week. And at the weekend there's always a planetarium show on and a Science Theatre show on. So those two have to be changed over. Generally the planetarium's not too bad because you have to change the DVD and the slides possibly, that's all you need to change. Science Theatre you have to change all the equipment in there. Occasionally you'll use some of the same equipment but usually it's completely different equipment for the weekend and the week. So that'll be up for 2 days. During the summer, whatever we put in there will be in there for perhaps 6 weeks. The lab isn't used every week. At the moment it's tending to be used every week but, it's quite time consuming - because it's not only the stuff we do here. Because we've got the franchise in - Wrexham as well now, it's just started. Do you know about the (Newy) one in?

BS: yeah yeah.

DB: Yeah you know. Because that's started obviously then every 3 weeks we have to get the stuff ready for that one to be taken up there as well. So that's an extra thing, on top of what we normally do, so. There's quite a lot of chopping and changing. If there's an evening event then we have to go and clear it all out. But we try to say "well, look if we've got huge things that are difficult to move can we not have an evening event during that week." But, if there's an evening event you usually have to clear the stuff then reset it the following morning as well.