Interview with Claire Welsh - Primary Schools Programme Manager

BS When I was watching the teacher training you used a lot of words like "messiness" and "squeezability". Could you say a little bit about that?

CW Well, yeah, I mean the teachers, the teachers don't, that's, that's really for them taking back into school but - yeah, I mean as far as possible we want children to experience things. I mean it's difficult in some of the areas in that, like in the theatre where you've got a hundred children, you can't really, occasionally we pass something round to them all but that gets quite distracting sometimes. So you're a bit limited in actually getting their hands, everyone getting their hands on, so sometimes it's got to be volunteers down and that sort of thing. But, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean my point of view if I was in school would be "yes, get more, you know more physical experiences of things" and, yes, messiness and hands-on stuff.

I mean something we've tried recently, thinking of, sort of, getting people interacting in shows and things is, in the planetarium what tends to happen there is we have like a 12 minute pre-recorded bit and there's slides and video going on and, then the presenter talks about the night sky and stars and things. And, if I was looking round at some primary school children and, they've been rushing round and so they sit there and they just kind of like, it's very relaxed in there and it's nice and comfy and you can see it's just like all washing over them and they've no idea. You could, you could just, you know if you suddenly stopped it they would be like "Oh! What?" you know. And, so what we've done in, in the last show that we did a few weeks ago was, they have like a 2 minute presentation and they have a little quiz on it and they have a 2 minute presentation, little quiz, 2 minute presentation, little quiz, you know. And it's, it just, you know "Oh! Someone's going to ask me something" you know ((laughs)). I mean it's the same for all of us isn't it really, you know ((laughter)) Something keeps you on the ball. That, that's sort of has helped, I think.