Our Role… Your Role
The juxtaposition of these two titles (Our Role, Your Role) on large outdoor interpretive panels really made an impression on me. They were part of a panel series situated on a viewing platform that overlooked a ravine where a now abandoned artificial peregrine falcon nest had been built on the opposite side. Read the text on the following two images.
image courtesy Bill Reynolds
image courtesy Bill Reynolds
This is an excellent call to action providing the visitor with a follow-up to a learning they have acquired at your site. We all need to include this type of “things to do” back home stimulus as part and parcel of the various teachable moments visitors encountered. Thinking about what visitors are going to DO with the information we provide should be always on our mind. Answering WHY we have told them something goes hand in hand with this. Our role… your role is an instructive coupling that presents a heritage protection message the visitor takes home with them. If you have seen a good example on your travels, send it to us.
Fossil Finesse
Had to share a form of personal interpretation that I encountered this summer that stood out as an engaging approach to presenting historical earth timelines as a starter exercise to a Fossil Walk. How do you set up a participatory role for your programme attendees to get across the appreciation for a chronological succession in time gaps between the creation of different forms of lifeforms as they appeared on earth and subsequently showed up in the fossil record.
image courtesy Bill Reynolds
This interpreter had pre-prepared about 12-15 stiff white cards (see image) labelled with names of life forms (like flowering plants, shellfish, dinosaurs) and major geological events (like last ice age) and he distributed them among the attendees. He also included Humans as a life form card which is critical to place people in relationship. This programme was being done on a beach where we were to soon explore for fossils. To kick start the proceedings, he set timeline boundaries on the beach surface by placing the card labelled (EARTH CREATION) at one end then walked in a straight line to another spot (20-30 yards away) and placed the card labelled NOW.
Then he asked the participant cardholders to place their cards in order of when their creatures first appeared on earth (due to their fossil evidence). As there were around 50 people on the walk, he had thought about a role for everybody. Any suggestions from non cardholders were encouraged. Lots of discussions took place among people of all ages and levels of expertise and cards were moved about once everyone had seen the whole complement of life forms to be sorted.
The interpreter had facilitated an experience and had taken himself out of the role as being the only sage on the stage. When he confirmed with us that we as a group were satisfied with our timeline choices, he summarized our work and had only two minor card shifting corrections. This set the context for the types of fossils we were going to find that day and the ones we were not due to the age of rocks that were exposed on the cliffs at this beach. We were never bombarded with any geologic terms. It was just a fun activity that involved the group along with couples and families working together. The activity set up the concept of a time relationship to ground us all around the fact that different types of fossils and only certain types of fossils will be found in certain places.
The Role of a Saltmarsh
Often, I find the role and significance of different habitats remains elusive to visitors when they try to fit information being presented to them about different habitats into their life. This interpretive sign accomplished this to a degree better than I have normally run across.
image courtesy Bill Reynolds (apologies for the light glare)
The title drew me in as it stated that the writer actually loved a salt marsh and s/he/they was going to point out the many ways why. I found the 5 key points were abit buried in text and I would have bolded a few words up front as sub-headings beside each number, so the quick reader (scanner) could grasp the points without having to read the whole paragraphs. As an example, Shoreline Protector, and Contaminant Filter are two sub-headings I would suggest to grab attention.
There is a subtle call to action related to the information about the Nature Trust and about how people can donate land to it.
The earth has a role in the great scheme of things as does a natural or cultural heritage organization as does every planetary citizen- let’s keep that in mind and try to interconnect them to the benefit of all life forms.