The Mid Year Report

My project is taking place at the Bishop’s Palace in Wells, where we are focusing on three completely contrasting projects. The idea is for each of us to take a lead on one of these different projects so, not only do we gain experience working within an historical establishment but also gain some leadership experience. It was easily decided that I would take on the Sensory Trail Project whilst Imogen and Sara shared responsibility of the Vox Pop Project and the Fundraising Project; however, it was agreed that we would essentially work as one big team and help each other.

                I came into the Sensory Trail Project after the planning stages had successfully taken place. At first, it all seemed quite overwhelming as everyone else involved were much more aware of what was going on and therefore, what had already been achieved; however, I soon caught up. The overall aim of the Sensory Trail is to improve access physically, intellectually and culturally to prospective visitors and members, with particular concentration on those with special needs. This should broaden our visitor scope as well as encourage repeat visits to the Palace. Through using the senses, we also aim to spread seasonal interest to our visitors; this will be achieved through the incorporation of signs to highlight specifically what can already be heard, seen, felt and smelt throughout the walk. Coupled with the planting of certain herbs and plants that have distinctive colours and smells should enliven visitor’s senses naturally.

                The part of the trail that was still in the ideas stage was the end point and for the first few weeks, we were still throwing around ideas. Out of our budget of £7200, the Palace had paid Angela to design 9 different possible endings to the Sensory Trail. This was the final design:

  

With our budget in mind, we are only going to do the top half of the design; the green crescent shapes are going to be filled with scented herbs and colourful plants which will flower at different times throughout the year so the trail is always outlined with colour. We decided that we liked the idea of a final resting point so we hope to have a chair which circles a tree. The pole maze is where wooden stepping stones shall be placed and the blackboards are going to be made portable so guests can take them round the trail recording what they can see, hear and feel.

                Currently, the Sensory Trail stands with the end point area cleared and ready for planting. We devoted Wednesday December 5th to clearing and I organised for Lufton College to come in and help us. I felt the day was a success and this can be seen through pictures of the area now:

Before

After

After

                Working with a Special Needs school is very rewarding and I felt happy with the results we achieved. I am meeting with Amanda next week to discuss our next steps with the Sensory Trail; I know we still have to organise the signs and receive a quote from Adam who is working on building a chair for the final point and the stepping stones which will be used to climb on. However, I am very happy with where the Sensory Trail is going and feel we are on target to open it by May.

                In terms of our other projects, Vox Pop is certainly running more smoothly than Fundraising. The Vox Pop project is based on Oral History and the overall aim is to interview a number of volunteers about their placement roles at the Palace, so prospective volunteers and current volunteers can watch them to gain information about the role they are fulfilling. So far we have discussed with Anneli suitable questions to ask volunteers and have run our first videoing shoot. This was done with the help of Taras, the Learner Mentor. It was a success in the way that it highlighted all the things we need to work on such as camera quality, making the interviewee feel comfortable and asking appropriate questions for the role. In this run through, I was asking the questions whilst Imogen and Sara worked the equipment. This worked well and I feel this is what we shall continue to do. I learnt that in order to ask relevant questions, meeting with the interviewee before the interview would be much more beneficial than sending a simple email and would make the whole ordeal more comfortable. Our next move with this project is to create a timeline for Anneli which will show when we will fit in all the interviews and meetings. We are also going to look into filming the volunteers within their roles and have been looking at examples of this online. This will need more planning and another meeting with the interviewees.

                The Fundraising Project is the one I feel I have least involvement in. The overall aim for this project is to plan and run an event which will raise a net profit of £10 000. We plan to do this by forming and discussing any initial ideas with Jo and testing them through a visitor survey to see if they would be successful. However, things are advancing very slowly; we have discussed ideas at length and a number of draft surveys have been created. I think it needs our full concentration next term and we need to meet with Jo exactly what she wants from us as the surveys originally designed by Imogen and Sara were a little wrong and need some adjusting.

                In conclusion, I believe that we are working well towards our goals at the Bishop’s Palace. I feel the Sensory Trail is going particularly well after our successful clearing day on Wednesday 5th and I am looking forward to meeting with Amanda next week to see what is next on the agenda. The Vox Pop Project is also going well and once we get more organised and sort our technical difficulties then the filming process should fall into place. The Fundraising Project needs a little more work but I feel there has been some miss-communication and miss-understandings and once these have been addressed hopefully things will begin to advance once more. Overall, I think there are more positives than negatives and we will make a difference to the Bishop’s Palace. 

The Big Day

I can't believe how quickly December 5th came around, it feels like I have been at Wells for no time at all. However, this is the day we've been working towards all term and I feel it was a great success.

I was a little anxious that I had not heard back from Ben and Lufton Collage at the beginning of the week and thought they may have changed their minds but Ben finally got back to me on Monday afternoon with news that they were aiming to arrive around 10:00am. This was fantastic as it was a little earlier than I anticipated and therefore I was hoping to get more done.

I managed to beg Immy to leave a little earlier on Wednesday so we arrived at the Palace around 9:30am which gave me a bit of time to help Amanda set up although she was extremely organised and was pretty ready to roll.

I was stood by the drawbridge all ready for the collage to arrive and time began to tick away and again anxiety bubbled when they were still nowhere to be seen at 10:20am. By this point I was feeling rather cold and was beginning to wonder what I was going to tell Amanda if they hadn't arrived within the next 10 minutes. To my immense relief they did and by 10:30 we were all warming up in the Learning Room with tea, coffee, biscuits and a health and safety chat.

There were 12 students and 4 staff from Lufton College plus some regular volunteers all willing to help out so it looked as if it would be a promising day.

At the beginning of the day, the surrounding area looked like this:

Most of our work was concentrated behind the tree, along the back wall and to the right. The volunteers were fantastic, they were all really eager to work and so refreshing to be around. I learnt so much from them whether it was about different tractors or Family Guy or even Call of Duty. Their staff were amazing as well as it takes a lot of patience and encouragement to work with special needs especially in an environment like ours where we didn't have all the time in the world.

By lunch time, it was clear that we had made quite a sizable dent:

 From the same point I took the original picture, it looks like little has been done but you can see that all the border along the back wall has been cleared ready for planting and although the sun is the way, the other picture shows where we began to clear away the area to the right of the trees.

After lunch, we had another couple of hours before the volunteers had to leave for their trip back to Yeovil. We had the extra help from some of the Cathedral School volunteers as well to add to our workforce. My role changed after lunch, instead of helping the college clear the area itself, I took over Amanda's initial role of standing on top of the ever growing compost heap that we were creating and ensuring that it was piled up high rather than running into the pathway. It was a glamorous job but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was working with two of the College students - Jack and Leah - as well as Elspeth, one of the Palace Gardeners. It gave me the opportunity to get to know them all a little better and there was Christmas songs involved at one stage; Last Christmas was a particular favourite.

After working hard, these were  our final results:

Whilst I was busy playing in the beautiful mound of what-will-be compost, the other volunteers were busy cutting away all the excess grass and weeds and even beginning to dismantle a tree. The end results looked absolutely fantastic and I was blown away by all their hard work.     The feedback I got from Ben is that everyone really enjoyed their day and Amanda has said that we will invite them back when the time comes to begin planting.

 

 Next week, Amanda and I will be having a meeting to discuss how the day went overall as well as the next big steps for the project. I think it is all running smoothly at the moment and I'm happy with the progress we are making.

...And If You Could Move Slightly To The Left...?

Wednesday 21st November was the first big filming day.

It was a difficult day all round, mainly due to the horrendous weather and various flooded roads; to suggest we almost had to swim down to Wells is nothing short of hyperbolic. It's safe to say we all breathed a sigh of relief when it was clear we had survived the initial journey.

The purpose of this particular session was to test the equipment and work out how the filming process would take place, focusing on camera angles etc. Taras agreed to be our guinea pig and this worked out nicely.

We had poor Taras constantly moving left, then right, then left again and then a little more to the right. However, he was very patient with us. The questions we asked him were also very simple and were based around his experience working at the Palace in general:

• What is your main role and how long have you worked at the Palace?
• Tell us about your favourite parts of your day.
• What attracted you to work for the Palace in the first place?
• How easy was the application process?
• What has the Palace done for you?
• How vital is the role of history within your volunteer post?

All these questions had been emailed to him previously so his answers were very good. It became apparent very quickly that he was nervous in front of the camera and the more takes we did, the more relaxed he became.

Wednesday November 28th was feedback day. We met with Anneli to discuss how the filming went - problems and surprises.

Our first big issue was the quality of the film - the picture that came out was very blurry and fuzzy so we may have to speak to Bobby about finding a replacement. The sound also appeared to be out of sync at various points which is a big problem.

It also became apparent that we will need to meet with the interviewees before the filming rather than merely emailing them beforehand so we can discuss their roles a little and how the filming process will work. This was a result from Taras getting a little confused over the purpose of the filming the week before.

Taras has two important volunteer roles within the Palace and during the interview he kept swapping and changing between the two so by meeting with him beforehand, he would have understood that we wanted him to talk purely on the Learner Mentor Role even though this was stated in the initial email.

Also by meeting with the interviewees and discussing their roles, we can form more specific questions to get the most out of what they do as Taras' answers were often a little vague.

Anneli also wants us to film the volunteers within their roles so the video is a little more lively than a person literally answering questions in front of a camera. She sent us a very useful video as an example of this.

With Taras this should be rather straightforward as we are his main priority as a Learner Mentor so we can film ourselves with him discussing our projects. However, the other roles will involve more in depth organising.

We will be focusing on the following roles:

• Visitor Services Volunteer - Tony Hathway and Taras
• Guide - Pam Morris
• Learning Assistant/Palace Water Walk - Rosie Petherick
• Risk Assessments (Events) - Peter Jones
• Learner Mentor - Taras
• Gardening - to be confirmed.

To film these volunteers within their role will involve finding members of the public who are willing and patient enough to be filmed. We discussed the possibility of inviting friends of the volunteers to the Palace or even using Anneli within the films. This still needs thinking about.

Our next move is to make a timeline of events so we have a sort of deadline - when will we be filming who etc. This should make the process run more smoothly.

All moving onwards and upwards!!

"What has the Palace done for you?"

I believe an update is in order from last Wednesday (14th November).

It was meant to be one of those hectic days with not a moment to spare; alas, we have some busy people working at the Palace.

The day was originally scheduled as follows:

• 11:00 Meeting with Helen Garrett to discuss events at the Palace, how they work and what they have done in the past to see if we could steal some ideas for the Fundraising project.
• 12:00 Meeting with Sarah Moore to discuss how she wants the Vox Pop to be used on the website so we could get an idea of how to display our vidoes, set them out etc.
• Lunch
• 14:00 Meeting with Anneli and Taras to further discuss the Vox Pop project. Sort out a day with Taras to begin the filming process.
• 15:00 Meeting with James and Amanda to complete preparations for the Clearing Day and finalise plans for Angela - essentially what do we need her for??

With these busy plans, I was quite excited for last week. We rocked up at the Palace at 10:00 to discover Sophie was using the Learning Room so we got the opportunity to use the Big Guy's office with Helen and Anneli.

Our meeting with Helen was delayed due to various Trustee meetings but when we did get a chance to speak to her, she was extraordinarily helpful. We learnt that our initial ideas with running a big event would be okay and perfectly achievable. She filled us in on how difficult it would be to set up an event in a marque and introduced the new possibility of creating a more intimate atmosphere for no more than one hundred people so we could minus the cost of a marque making it much cheaper.
We also learnt that any event must finish by 23:00 and it waould be perfectly acceptable to use the moat for an event.

The only thing she said was that we would not be allowed any gambling, Halloween or firework activities of any kind. She also highlighted that anything we did plan could not be any earlier than July which is a shame but we could make a special trip back to the Palace for it.

Unfortunately, Sarah was ill last week so we didn't get a chance to meet with her but she did send us an email with some good Vox Pop ideas. We particularly liked one with the questions running down the right of the screen so the video just showed the interviewee talking but then different questions were highlighted as he answered them.

We met with Anneli and Taras as planned. This was quite exciting as we have officially booked the first interview. We shall be interviewing Taras Wednesday November 21st. We have booked a little room within the Palace called The Snug which is a very comfy little room so hopefully it won't make him too nervous throughout the talk. We have asked him to look at the questions in the email and have booked the room between 10:30 and 13:00 so we have lots of time to experiment with the camera and try different things out to get the most out of Taras before the other major ones begin.

We also talked through with Anneli our ideas for the video as a whole. We are going to do two different videos - one as more like an advertising video, inspired by channel 4. We hope to get all the volunteers say a word or small phrase that in the end will make a sentence describing what it is like working at the palace. Our other video will just be plain interviewing. Although we may experiment with different camera views so our potential audience does not get bored.

My meeting with James and Amanda went very well. I told them the successful news from Mr Ben Beaton and things are moving on nicely. James has confirmed that we will not need Angela's help planting any of the seeds or bulbs and that all the ones which have been selected will be fairly easy to maintain. It was also decided that we would use a bonfire to get rid of any waste from the clearing day and we will have to buy some more gloves using our budget. And we have the go ahead the build some bat boxes and bird feeders - now I just need to look into it. I have emailed Moira about booking the Learning Room for our volunteers' lunch and everything is good to go. Amanda has emailed me some templates to make some risk assessments which I still need to do.

Just before we left for the day, I also got to say a quick hello and goodbye to Sophie. I think we're going to do her proud. I'm waiting to hear if the school she has chosen to take part in Interpreting Trees are still available to complete the project and she will hopefully let me know.

I'm still enjoying every tiny little aspect of the Palace. I look forward to it all week. Hopefully the videoing will be a success on Wednesday :)

Clearing Day

All missions are go with the Sensory Trail Clearing Day.

I have had a reply from Mr Ben Beaton from Lufton College. He is very eager to help on December 5th. He is bringing 12 students and 5 staff so we will have plenty of hands to help out.

I have already emailed Moira to find out where is best for them to park and all that is left to do is make some Risk Assessments and book the Learning Room so they can have some lunch.

I'm a little bit excited to tell Amanda and James on Wednesday - I feel like I have actually achieved something.

Vox Pop Update

This Wednesday is going to be a busy day for us at the Palace I believe.

Anneli really wants us to get on with the Vox Pop project and so I have been busy moving things on.

We have thrown ideas around and have come to the general conclusion that we need to talk to Sarah Moore to find out what she wants to do with the video once it's ready to go online. We have discussed how long we want the interviews to be - I know Sara looked into some on youtube and got relatively bored after roughly two minutes. This seems logical.

I would quite like to do two or three videos:

• One with the videos of each volunteer role.
• One as a walking tour of the grounds where we casually bump into other volunteers and interview them there.
• One with all the volunteers in saying what they enjoy most about their role/why they chose the Palace in the first place.

Our first interview is going to be with Taras who is our own special supporting role as he knows us relatively well and understands the project so it won't matter if it takes forever or if there are any mistakes.

We are hoping to do this either November 21st or 28th depending on which date is best for him and I have emailed him with a list of questions to think about:

• Your role in general, What are your main duties?
• What you enjoy most about your position/your favourite part of a volunteering day.
• Why you volunteered for the Palace in the first place?
• How easy was the application process?
• What has the Palace done for you/do you feel supported?

I started with the basic questions so they don't seem too daunting for him. After we talk to Sarah on Wednesday and find out what she wants out of the film then I may email him again with some further detailed questions. I have also asked him to think about any funny little anecdotes we may be able to use in the film. These could be used within the third video with all the volunteers in because we will essentially be asking everyone the same questions and this could get boring for a potential volunteer looking at a number of positions.

I think that is all to report for now. Once Taras has chosen a date, we can look into booking rooms for the interview to take place.

It's all getting rather exciting.

The Sensory Trail

Just behind the Dragon which symbolises the end of "Bishop Jocelin's Dragon Hunt" will be the setting to our Sensory Trail.

The idea of the Sensory Trail is to enable children and vulnerable adults to enjoy the Palace as much as the other visitors. I came into the project when ideas were about to be finalised so I didn't have a massive say on any of the design ideas. However, this didn't stop me planning. I looked into how people with learning difficulties explore the area around them; I found this site particularly useful for inspiration.

We knew that we wanted to keep the trail relatively simple - emphasising the sensory surroundings the Palace already has to offer. So the first thing Sophie and Amanda did was to look into some herbs and flowers we could plant for maximum sensory effect.

I particularly concentrated on sound, the ending point, the seasons and nature. I considered the idea of music so adding a drum or a rainwheel to the middle of the trail but we decided that we wanted it to be centered around reflection and peace. However, there is the possibility of adding windchimes to the tree at the end point.

In terms of nature, I am planning to talk to James next Wednesday about getting in some school groups for the day to make some bird feeders and bat boxes - this will work on sight and sound. I also considered the idea of making some wooden animals maybe in the shape of snakes for kids to climb on and carve markings into them so they have an interesting texture; however with a tight budget we have decided on wooden stepping stones for kids to climb over and hop from one to the other instead.

We also considered getting in some mirrors and making a maze but through some research, we found that mirrors can be very confusing, especially to people suffering with impaired vision.

I discovered that seasons were difficult to incorporate into a trail, I wanted to make an area which could be dedicated to different seasons so we could make an Easter egg hunt during Spring or make collages from autumnal leaves or write letters to Santa at Christmas but it didn't seem feasible in an open air space. However, just through carefully selecting the right plants the trail should have a lot to offer all year round. 

We met with Angela who designed our final plans - she did nine sketches of the area with our ideas in mind and this is hopefully how it should look:

With our budget in mind, we are actually only going to do the top half of the design; the green crescent shapes are going to be filled with scented herbs and colourful plants which will flower at different times throughout the year so the trail is always outlined with colour. We decided that we liked the idea of a final resting point so we hope to have a chair which circles a tree. The pole maze is where our wooden stepping stones shall be and the blackboards we are going to make portable so guests can take them round the trail recording what they can see, hear and feel.

We carefully considered the blackboards and how we would signpost the trail. The Palace didn't want another paper based trail as they already have the "dragon hunt" so the idea of the blackboards was popular. They are going to be created from the same wood as the stepping stones which will be varnished so white board pens can be used to write on them and then simply wiped away at the end of the trail. We looked into the idea of braille but discovered that only 2% of visually impaired people use it we abandoned that idea. However we are going to look into signposts with buttons so when pressed something is read aloud.

Our budget stands at £7,200 and so far we have spent £450 on the designs of the trail and Angela has quoted £1000 to mark out the beds for the plants and buy the seeds/bulbs (we are going to see if we can cut this down by seeing what the Palace already has in terms of seeds and bulbs). This leaves £5,750 which will be used on the woodwork. This will be done by Adam who is yet to give us a quote for the blackboards, stepping stones and the chair at the end of the trail.

Okay, so what next?

Currently, the ending point to the trail where the chair and herb beds will be looks like this:

I met with Amanda today to discuss a day for the area to be cleared in order for the building work to commence. The clearing day will be on Wednesday December 5th. The plan is to email a local school to get some willing volunteers to help us. This particular school specialises in special needs education so this will be an excellent opportunity for them as well as for us. The school have already said that twelve students aged between sixteen and nineteen want to be involved with the Palace so I just have to see if they are available for the decided day. My plans are to email them with information about the project and what they can help us with - what they need to bring etc. I have also emailed James to see if we can borrow some of his sacred gardening equipment and to see whether we can build some bird feeders and bat boxes as well.

The next job is to make some risk assessments which will be a new experience for me, find parking arrangements for the school and to meet with the big management team to get the definite okay for our plans before we start the big work.

The project is finally beginning to take place, I will keep regularly updating the blog so progress can be seen! 

Introduction

So, we have been working in Wells for over a month now and finally the projects seem to be taking off.

We have three main projects to look at:

1) Vox Pop - This is an Oral History project set up with the aim of finding new volunteers for the Palace and informing them of the role they would be expected to fulfill and what volunteering for the Palace is like - highs and lows, opportunities and anecdotes etc.

So far, we have compiled a list of questions and have trialed them with the wonderful Anneli - the volunteers coordinator at the Palace. We hope to start filming soon with Bobby's beautiful pink camera. All we need to do is tempt some fellow volunteers into a room with plenty of tea and biscuits. We learnt from our trial run that our volunteers must have an idea of the questions we will be asking to limit the number of pauses and "ummms" and "arrrs" etc. so some emailing around and organising needs to be done.

Imogen and Sara are overlooking this project but I'm hoping to help out with the filming and most definitely the editing as that will be a huge learning curve for me. Our general aim for the project as a whole is to make a walking tour of the Palace grounds and stopping to interview various volunteers along the way; but also to create links from the volunteer application page on the website so it goes straight into the role the aspiring volunteer is interested in. We have to talk to Sarah Moore to see if this is all possible but hopefully it should all come together.

2) Fundraising for the Great Hall - I definitely find this project most daunting. The aim is to raise money for restoration of the thirteenth century Great Hall which was originally used by Bishop Burnell for entertaining. We are approaching this project in a similar way to the Vox Pop by performing little interviews with visitors to find out what sort of events they have been in the past at the Palace and which were successful. We hope within this we can promote the Palace a little more and attract lots of visitors. We have also done a brainstorm of ideas for events: these have been as huge as a traditional thirteenth century banquet with entertainment to as small as a penny mile. We are still looking into final ideas which I will post in more detail later.

We hope to begin the interviewing of visitors this week (Wednesday November 7th) with the aid of Jo - the fundraising coordinator. This should hopefully give us a solid ground to start working on events.

Again, Imogen and Sara are taking the lead on this project. I hope to help them as much as possible. Last week, Imogen and I scrutinised the list of ideas we have so far and came up with some feasible ideas. We also perfected the list of questions to ask the visitors so hopefully this week should run smoothly.

3) The Sensory Trail - This is the project which I am concentrating on and therefore the project I am most excited about. Our aim is to make the Palace more accessible to people of all ages and abilities; the sensory trail is specifically aimed towards children and vulnerable adults. It is designed to be a place or reflection, relaxation and above all a space that excites all the senses. We have concentrated closely on sight, smell, touch and sound. I will do another post with all the details of planning and final plans as I have sketches I can upload.

We are now at the stage where we can begin to clear the area and work towards finalising ideas and making sure everything will work how we want it to. Our main focus is the end point where we will have a resting area and some small wooden blocks designed for climbing on and feeling.

I would particularly like to encourage nature onto the sight by looking into making some bird feeders with school children and talking to James about building some bat boxes. I feel the project has a lot of potential to be extremely successful.

Currently, the end point consists of weeds and overgrown plants - I will take some pictures as we go along - so our first port of call is to organise a day for volunteers to work with James to clear most of the area so we can start building around December/New Year.

That is a brief introduction to how far we have come with planning so far. As well as our projects, we are finding that we also have to make an extra effort to be approachable to the other volunteers - we do not want to appear as outsiders or taking over their roles so we are making a conscious effort to get to know as many volunteers as possible. Last Wednesday, a leaving party was held for Sophie (who was covering maternity leave for Helen and was leading the Sensory Trail Project). It was a fantastic opportunity for Imogen and I to meet some of the volunteers and socialise out of a specific role. We also got to meet Helen and her baby boy - Henry, who was definitely the most popular boy in the room!! This led to Sophie offering me another project she had been working on called Interpreting Trees.

It is a small project which consists of a group of nine school children visiting the Palace and choosing their favourite tree. These children have been selected specifically because they are struggling with confidence in class so the idea is to film the children talking about their said trees to help boost their self esteem.

My role in the project is to help it run smoothly and to essentially entertain the children whilst they're waiting to be filmed. It is going to be fantastic.

I think this is a long enough entry for now. I will aim to publish again on Wednesday with our progress and any updates. I will also post in more detail about the Sensory Trail.

:)