Written by Ellen De Korte

It is roughly one week until the Lates and the Bradford Science Festival. I am collecting final bits for my stall and testing things out. The big challenge of it all is finding ways to draw people in and keep them long enough in order to get them interested in my research. This is not only about designing my stall, but also how I will take visitors through my objects.

Cameras from the National Science and Media Museum’s handling collection were a major challenge, because they appeared to be more attractive to visitors than the other ordinary objects on my table. It is interesting to see people’s responses to the cameras. Visitors seemed to find cameras from around 1900 strange (and they are), because taking a picture with it is very different from how we take pictures nowadays. On the other hand, the more recent ones (1980’s) were more familiar to older visitors, so the cameras draw people in for two entirely opposing reasons.

Either way, this meant that I had to find a way to get the handling collections objects in, without entirely losing the visitors to them. As soon as visitors were allowed to handle the old cameras, it was hard to get them back on track. Therefore, I tried introducing the cameras later on as a surprise for visitors who lingered a bit longer, which seemed to work much better.

This is one of the many things I am learning on my way to the Lates and the Bradford Science Festival. I think I will learn a lot during the events themselves as well. For now, I will get ready for the big days and enjoy a visit to the museum’s partner in Manchester: the National Science and Industry Museum.