: Community Engagement

“Codi i’r Wyneb - Brought to the Surface” is a project on freshwater snails led by the Museum’s Department of Natural Sciences, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For more information on the project I recommend reading; Shells at the Surface of “Brought to the Surface” (January, 2019) and “Brought to the Surface” Now in Full Flow (June, 2019). 

Ben and I have been busy since the last blog entry in June 2019! We took our project on tour, visiting a variety of different public events, training workshops and conferences. As a result, we have had the pleasure of engaging with a bunch of interesting people. 1,263 people to be exact! This has included professional consultants, scientific researchers, amateur naturalists, keen gardeners and more! We would like to thank you all so much! Your commentary and feedback has supported us on our way to producing an identification guide for environmentalists of all ages and backgrounds.

Snail Safari was one of our favourite public events of the last year. The bilingual educational workshop was designed for children aged 8-11 and was held at St Fagans National Museum of History. The purpose of the event, which consisted of two separate sessions, was to simulate and promote the type of work that we, as taxonomists, carry out at the museum.

For the introductory session we led the group on a safari to survey the ponds and lakes in the gardens at St Fagans. With nets and buckets the children collected freshwater snails to examine back at the classroom where, many of them were given a chance to use a microscope for the first time! The Gweithdy carpentry workshop served as an excellent impromptu laboratory with plenty of space for the group to lay out trays of pond water for sifting. The session ended with a lively competition to find the biggest and/or fastest snail. The enthusiasm displayed by the group impressed us so much, that we decided to kick it up a notch for the second session.

Inspired by Guess Who, Guess Whorl is a competitive card game in which players take turns asking questions about identifying features. The goal is to deduce the identity of a mystery freshwater snail species using the process of elimination, with questions such as, “Does your snail have a pointy shell?” or “Does the shell have stripes?”. The indoor Snail Safari session consisted of an exciting tournament to award the best taxonomist and Guess Whorl player in the group. Driven by the competitive element, the children became fascinated by our card game and the variety of different snail shells illustrated on the cards. With 17 species to guess from and 9 different identifying features, Guess Whorl kept us occupied for an entire afternoon!

By the end of the session, the group had learned about the differences between types of British pond snails and how to deduce and describe those differences in the same way as a taxonomist might. With some nets and buckets, a few laminated cards, and a bit of ‘thinking outside the box’ we delivered our favourite workshop yet.

Guess Whorl can now be used as a useful teaching tool for a variety of future public engagement events. With some adjustments, we think that the card game could be used for training purposes in identification courses for professionals as well as beginners!

We would like to thank Ian Daniel from St Fagans for his enthusiastic approach and brilliant improvisational skills. Thank you to the children from Ysgol Plasmawr, Ysgol Bro Edern, Ysgol Glantaf, and year 7,8 and 9 ladder group and platform group from Cardiff West Community High School, for taking part in our Snail Safari.

At this moment in time, museums across the world are launching initiatives to collect objects and personal stories relating to COVID-19.

This pandemic has raised a raft of questions for all museums, especially in relation to how they collect the current crisis in meaningful, ethical and sensitive ways. At Amgueddfa Cymru, we routinely collect the here and now (think Brexit, the Women's March etc.), but the enormity of this pandemic – its impact on individuals and communities across Wales – is unlike any other national event we have documented in recent decades.

Today, we launched a digital questionnaire as a first step towards creating a national COVID-19 collection at Amgueddfa Cymru, to be archived at St Fagans National Museum of History. With your help, through the questionnaire, we hope to collect personal stories (written testimony, photographs and films) from across the country to create a comprehensive picture of life in Wales during the lockdown and beyond. We will also use the responses to identify and collect objects which could, in the future, represent the 3D memory of COVID-19 in Wales.

By doing this, we are revisiting a collecting methodology which is rooted in the Museum’s history, and is indicative of the early collecting practices of Dr Iorwerth Peate – the first curator of St Fagans. In December 1937, Dr Peate, who at the time was based at the National Museum of Wales in Cathays Park, published a questionnaire which was sent to 493 respondents across Wales. Launched in a decade largely defined by economic hardship and unemployment, it asked participants to provide information about the domestic, public and cultural life of their local area. Although developed by Iorwerth Peate, the questionnaire’s introduction was penned by the Museum’s Director, Cyril Fox:

This questionnaire has been prepared in the hope that persons in each parish in Wales will study the life of that parish on the lines indicated therein… The pamphlet indicates the direction in which the Welsh public can help in the work of this Department and its National Museum… Photographs and drawings will be gladly received… It is hoped, moreover, that correspondents, once they have established contact, will keep in constant touch with the Museum so that the Department is kept well-informed of any developments which are relevant to its work.

In preparing the questionnaire, the Museum was effectively asking the people taking part to become regular informants, to use their community knowledge to assist with developing a collection which would later form the basis for the creation of the Welsh Folk Museum at St Fagans in 1948. 

Questionnaires and blank ‘answer books’ requesting information on a range of subject areas were in regular use by the Museum up until the 1980s, and today the responses received (almost 800 in total) form a significant part of the archive collection at St Fagans.

Another collecting method pioneered by the Museum under the direction of Iorwerth Peate was the collecting of oral testimony. Following a public appeal launched on BBC radio in March 1958, St Fagans embarked on the systematic collecting of oral traditions and dialects. The funds raised allowed the Museum to buy recording equipment to undertake the work, including an EMI TR51 portable recorder, and a DC/AC converter, with two acid batteries and yards of cable, to record people in remote areas without electricity. A Land Rover was also purchased, fitted-out with wooden units made by the Museum’s carpenter to house the recording equipment.

Today, we have over 12,000 recordings in the archive, and in recent years we have become a repository for oral histories collected by community groups and organisations across Wales – from Mencap Cymru to Merched y Wawr.

The Land Rover may be long gone, but recording people’s lived experiences is still an important part of the collecting work we do, now more than ever. We very much hope that the COVID-19 questionnaire, the first to be launched by the Museum in the digital age, will enable people experiencing the pandemic in Wales to share their own stories in their own words, and provide future generations with personal, first-hand accounts of this chapter in our history.

 

In my previous blog I explained what rafting bivalve shells are and how Caribbean bivalves are ending up on British and Irish shores attached to plastics. There are numerous records of non-native bivalves on plastics in the southwest of Ireland and England but nothing has yet been reported in Wales, which is something that I’m trying to rectify. To encourage recording I’m enlisting citizen scientists – volunteers from the general public – who can help to spot and identify these rafting species in Wales. But first of all, I want to check to see if there are rafting species turning up on our shores so I began talking to groups who already go out on the shores to survey, beach clean or educate.

 

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

In December 2019 I met with a fantastic group of people at PLANED in Narbeth. PLANED have excellent coastal community links and everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic and willing to incorporate the rafting bivalves project into their usual activities of beach cleans, foraging, outdoor activities or education.  They were keen to help record any rafting species that they discover and we talked about how to identify any bivalves found. Since then I have been working on an identification guide that I plan to develop with the help of these community groups.

 

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

In February 2020 I met up with 35 people at the Pembrokeshire Coast National Parks offices in Pembroke Dock. They were eager to learn more about non-native bivalves on plastics. After lunch, those daring enough braved the freezing temperatures and gales to carry out a mini beach clean at Freshwater West beach. We found a lot of large plastic items in less than half an hour which we brought back to the car park for a closer look. Even though there were a lot of pelagic goose barnacles (stalked crustaceans related to crabs and lobsters that attach to flotsam) on some items, proving that the items had been floating in the ocean for a long time, no non-native bivalves were found.

Plastics found at Freshwater West beach - no bivalves attached, though!

In early March two colleagues and I attended the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society’s

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

conference where I presented the project and had several more offers of eyes on the ground to record and test the identification guide, which is great news.  I’ve also set up a Facebook page where volunteers can post images of any suspected non-native bivalves for me to identify. I’m hoping to meet up with several more groups later in the year to ask them to look for these pesky hitchikers so we can find out if and where they are attempting a Welsh invasion!

If you would like to help record non-native bivalves on plastics on Welsh beaches then do contact me at Anna.Holmes@museumwales.ac.uk

 

The gardens of the Quarrymen’s Houses at the National Slate Museum are a popular part of the visitor experience - but the planting choices are not just there to look nice - they're there to add an extra layer of meaning to the stories of the quarrymen’s families and lives.

The gardens are mostly tended by a hardworking team from Gwynedd Council working from their base at Melin Glanrafon, Glynllifon. The team is part of Gwynedd Council’s adult, health, and wellbeing department, and offers training and experience for adults with learning difficulties. The team are contracted to look after the gardens all year round and to ensure that they are in tip top condition for visitors.

Cadi Iolen, Curator of the National Slate Museum explains more about the history and context for the gardens:

“The Quarrymen’s Houses were moved from Tanygrisiau to the National Slate Museum 21 years ago. Each house reflects a different period in the history of the slate industry – from 1861 in Tanygrisiau at the rise of the industry to a household in 1901 on strike during the Penrhyn Lockout of 1900 -1903 and a house in 1969 in Llanberis  - when Dinorwig quarry closed for the final time.

Initially we sought advice from the head gardener at our sister site,  St Fagans: National History Museum, who outlined what we should use for each house in order to further interpret the living conditions at the time. After that it was over to the gardeners to grow and prepare all that was need for the gardens.

Our 1861 house has a herbal garden including  fennel, mint, and st john’s wort. The 1901 house is more practically planted with a vegetable garden in the front as well as the back as the family would have needed to grow their own food at a time of particular hardship.  By 1969, the gardens become much more decorative with wallflowers, begonias and lots of colourful planting similar to the gardens that we grow ourselves today.  We also grow potatoes and rhubarb in the back of the Education House which our actors in residence refer to when on site and which are occasionally used in the cafe. ”

Produce and flower gardens were a mainstay of Miner's homes. An important place where food was grown, where pidgeons, chickens and often a pig was also kept. Sharon Ford is Learning and Participation Manager at Big Pit National Coal Museum. She wrote this article for our blog, in celebration of the health and wellbeing benefits of gardening - particularly during this lockdown. Its full of gardening joy and helpful hints and tips, and Sharon had more than a little help from a fellow keen gardener - her son, Iwan.

‘We may think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it's our garden that is really nurturing us’   

Jenny Uglow

I’ve never been so grateful to have a garden as I do at the moment, because it offers a space to inhabit beyond the four walls of the house. The fact that the weather has been so consistently good has enabled us to make the most of being outdoors when not working, to get out of each other’s way when we need a bit of solitary time, and of course catch up on all the garden tasks which are usually shoe horned into evenings and weekends. Having something to plan and focus on has been really helpful in taking our minds away from the current global crisis and the fact that we are away from friends and family. Even our energetic 8 year old son Iwan has been more engaged with the outdoors so far this year, planning which vegetables he wants to harvest and eat in a few months time, and the fresh air and activity tires him out at the end of the day. This is important as he is missing his usual swimming, gymnastics and rugby sessions.

The benefits of gardening on physical and mental health are well-researched and widely known, and it can help with a range of physical conditions such as high blood pressure and anxiety, as well as helping those with more defined mental health problems.

Not everyone is as lucky as we are to have a garden at home and an allotment just across the road, but keeping pots or planters of vegetables in small spaces can also help reduce stress and boost self-esteem. Tending for house plants has also been proven to give a sense of purpose, and can be a good place to start for those with no previous experience of gardening.

Anyway, I asked Iwan of he wanted to share his top tips for growing and tending, as he’s a seasoned gardener with four years experience now. He also wanted to share his tips for keeping chickens, just in case anyone is thinking of getting chickens to keep them happy! By the way, the therapeutic benefits of chicken keeping are also well documented!

My name is Iwan Ford. I am 8 years old and live in Blaenavon. During the lockdown, I spend all my time at home with Mam and Dad. It is ok but I miss my friends and cousins. We are very lucky because we have two gardens and two chickens. My chickens are called Barbara and Millie. I had another chicken who was called Penny, but she died a few weeks ago because she was poorly. We buried her in the garden.

Someone gave Millie to us when they heard Barbara was on her own. She is a Silkie, and is very funny and clumsy. She has big feet and walks on and into everything. Sometimes she kicks the food over and sometimes she walks over Barbara. She is very friendly and follows me around the garden. Silkies have blue ears and furry feathers. Barbara is a small bantam and has very beautiful feathers. She had orange feathers around her neck. She lays very small eggs but they are yummy and have very yellow yolks. You can tell they are happy chickens.

I do some gardening to help Mam and Dad because we have an allotment as well as our house garden. I like planting, watering and picking the vegetables and fruit when they grow. I have my own vegetable patch and have planted my French beans, pumpkin, marrow and kidney bean seeds already. Seeds need good soil with compost mixed in, sunshine and water. You have to remember to water a lot or they will not grow.

Iwan’s Top Tips:

Planting tips:

• Fill the plant pots with compost. Put your seed in. Sometimes you half fill the pot with compost then the seed then more compost. Sometimes you fill the pot then make a hole with your finger and put the seed in. Make sure you water them, and they will grow in a few weeks. When they have grown big enough and no more frost is coming, you put the plants out into the ground.
• If you haven’t got a garden you can grow potatoes in buckets or bags of compost if you cut the top. Tomatoes will grow like this as well.
• Always write the names of what you are planting on tags or lolly sticks and put into the pots so you know which is which.

Chicken tips:

• Silkie chickens don’t like to wander as they can’t fly, so if you only have a small garden silkies are the best.
• Chicken poos are good for making compost. When this is ready you can dig it into the soil to make your plants come up big and strong.
• Chickens love meal worms as a little treat. We give some to the chickens and put some out for the garden birds as well. ‘Beaky and Feather’ is the chickens favourite food and makes their feathers shine.