"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 :)