Curating diversity

Another deposit for Paganel Archives

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was...Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. The Catcher in the Rye

How can museums attract diverse audiences and what, if anything, can schools learn from the experience of museums?

Under the bed

Under my bed

I've been reading about the history of Woodcraft folk from Mary Davis's 'Fashioning a New World'.  It's been a great read and also fascinating from an archivists perspective, as apparently there is next to no 'secondary' material about the movement, and much of the primary sources are dotted all over the country - Mary complains her work would be easier 'if individual members who seem to have stacks of important documents under their beds would [make the material publicly available].

Interesting to consider what there is to 'uncover' under a bed particularly, perhaps, for children.  For children's lives exhibition  it identified the importance of 'under the bed' as one of the few 'private' spaces a child might have.  The 'present day' part of the exhibition worked with young people to re-create a teenagers bedroom, including boxes under the bed.  Birmingham children's hospital provides boxes for 'toys and special things'.

'Toys and special things' are what you might expect to find under a bed, and much can be learned from toys and special things of children, both to find out about them, and as a starting point for stories and other work developing from children presenting a little about themselves. For Paganel Archive project launch event we encouraged children to bring in something for our archive, among other activities.  We carefully managed around 300 items, all with deposit slips completed by the children - to include a description of the item presented in very different ways in each class.  The exhibition was a fascinating insight into the lives of the children, with many toys and special things, and now preserved digitally in our archives.  Each item documented by the owner - a perfect snapshot of the school.

And what's there under my bed I hear you ask?  An old DVD player, a book I'll never finish (Tom Paine, Rights of Man - my red under the bed), a tape of my old band from Uni, and a Ventolin inhaler!

Chris Upton, local hero & legend

At Chris's memorial service, Newman College, it became clear how little I knew about Chris's life, but no surprises how many lives he had touched.  In the short time I knew him it seemed he was able to easily read and understand me, and had an uncanny ability to lighten and inspire with the right story, or the wrong pun.

I've included some film clips - Chris opening Paganel Archives, at Paganel School presenting his 'local heroes', the famous rotunda legend, a clip by 'Astro Ignition', and the quote from the Venerable Bede from the reading given by Noel Williams at his memorial service at Newman University.

'He opened Hearts and Minds' @distinctlybc

BETT Conference 2014

Crowds drawn to the Google stall for
Paganel's chromebook presentation 

As  a British Education and Training Technology (UK exhibition) virgin, I was not disappointed by the scope and size of this huge event in ExCel, London.  I have already written a storify story for University of Birmingham - here are some more personal thoughts:

Is it rose-tinted google glasses or is the void between Mac and others a little less?  From an elearning developer perspective, it's great to see more compatibility between more devices.  I know I'm a little green, but it's strange to me how able some businesses are to manipulate markets, by building in incompatibility to force us to buy more and more of their products.  I can see this might please retailers, bigger purchasers and all the others interested in us buying more things, but how is it responding to market needs?  The consumer doesn't get what they want, but keeps coming back to buy more.  Oh, hold on a bit, is that bad capitalism?

'Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society...Production is carried on for profit, not for use.'

Albert Einstein - Albert goes on to say

'Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career'.  

He's touching on far broader themes but to go back to when goods no longer meet their purpose - that's the danger at an Ed Tech show. New stuff is great - I love gadgets, but where are the learners?

It is understandable that Ed Tech suppliers and services are keen to appeal to teachers and educators directly, but if your primary purpose was to 'effective education', then you'd want to see the products being used by those learners first - measure the effectiveness with the intended market, unless your interests were slipping towards profit and not use.  The presentations in the main Arena and elsewhere were more properly 'evidenced', sometimes directly with the presence of young people, but where were the young people in the audiences, on the stalls, all around?

Lego with my favourite (and cheapest) gadget -
a camera on a wire thing (£30)

I took a photo of our group of Yr6 children playing with Lego and its software to make cartoons in storytelling - one of the stalls they were attracted to.  After 5 minutes, a man on the stall politely asked us to move off the computer so a 'real customer' could have a go.  I didn't challenge him, which looking back I should have, and possibly the children didn't even notice.  The new customer didn't show quite the same joy and curiosity in play the children did, but maybe he bought a school load of stuff.

Children take questions from the audience

It was pretty hectic at the event, and wouldn't have been half as much fun (or learning?) for me if I hadn't gone with Paganel School - Thanks again!

Paganel Primary School also did two fantastic presentations - one on Paganel Archives led by the children, and one led by Mr Philp on the virtues of chromebooks.  Mr. Philp also did something on Raising standards with Technology, but I didn't go to that one.  Below, film clips, links, more photos, thanks to Paganel Archives:

Paganel Stories

After a truly eventful week, Paganel Archives is officially open.  On Friday 28th June we had a jam packed archive room - a room full of archives, stories, and some of the incredible creative responses children have made over the last week, and throughout the history of the school.



At the beginning of the week we had interviews with 24 local community representatives, including two former Head teachers from Paganel Primary school and many previous Paganel pupils from the very start of the school to the 1980s.  Every child in the school took part in those interviews which were all transcribed and prepared for our team of creative practitioners to work with every class (much thanks to Birmingham Archives and Heritage Outreach Team for support in that).  Meanwhile our Yr5 crack Archivist team have been preparing the catalogue, guidance on archives, and a tour for everyone in the school.

On Friday we combined with 'Parents in Paganel' to put on a top notch exhibition of our archives, archives inspired work and the Paganel Archives project, with cream cakes.  We were joined by our MP Gisela Stuart, Chris Upton, Local Historian and Senior Reader at Newmann University said a few words, and four of the children from our archives after-school club cut the ribbon to symbolically open our archives.  The archives themselves were so packed with parents, children and former pupils, it was hard to move.

Here are a few photos, clips and links to some of the stuff from last week:

Also see Paganel Primary School youtube channel for clips of Bobbie Gardner making songs with yr6, yr5 archive tour, yr4 making poetry with Roz Goddard, yr3 drawing a story with Prof Tom Jones,  yr2 photography with Brian Homer, yr1 Drama with Pyn Stockman, Songs and outdoor play with Clare Chapman for Nursery and Reception, all inspired by Paganel Stories from the interviews on Monday & Tuesday!

It is a repository archive so most of the collections are stored in the archive room at Paganel Primary School, which is open to public by appointment on Friday afternoons. However, our catalogue is available online here .

We are also working on a school website and http://weoleypedia.wikispaces.com/. There’s a bit of a backlog of material to put up, but we’re working on it and soon all the interviews, photos, film clips and other written material will be available online. Also try the school youtube for latest updates and some great short clips from ‘Paganel Stories’ week –http://www.youtube.com/user/PaganelSchool.

Paganel now has the first ARCHON registered repository archive in a state primary, and also the first weekly archive after-school club I’ve heard of – seehttp://archiveafterschoolclub.wordpress.com

It’s really impressive to visit, and we are working on making easier to search and navigate through online too.