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.