BM. This is a word you talk about quite a lot. A lot of the brochures
we see emphasise the fun factor in Techniquest. Why is that so important to
you?
CJ You won't teach anybody anything
unless they enjoy it and they're engaged with it and so the most important thing of all is that
people want to come here. Whether, when the teacher says "we're going to Techniquest
to do something on forces" you don't expect the children to go "Oh God." I
mean you actually want them to be to want to come here. And therefore the
experience needs to be enjoyable for the pupils and it needs to be - well
structured and effective from the teacher's point of view. Similarly for the
families. I mean they are not going to choose to spend their money on something
they don't think they're going to enjoy. And whether you use the word fun
or whether you use enjoyment, I mean it is absolute, I mean there is not the
least point in saying you know "this is a science place it is interesting
please queue here." I mean, people will not come, anymore than if you opened
up the labs in Cardiff University, people would not I mean apart from the
odd curious few, people would not turn up there. I mean, there's an absolute
imperative - to generate - an audience. And that audience has to be satisfied
and therefore everything we do has fundamentally to be customer focused even
though we might have some nice ideas of what we think the customer should
be focused on.
