Praise for our Science Week event!

My colleague, Dr Sarah Easterby-Smith, and I thought that dressing up in Georgian costume might be a way to engage visitors with historic artefacts relating to the voyages of discovery to the South Seas, in the late eighteenth century. Our event, which was part of Fife Science Week 2013, and hosted at MUSA (Museum of the University of St Andrews) went down well with at least one visitor: see Adrian Wale’s blog post, with pictures! (Adrian also reviewed the 2012 event, in which my final-year students participated.)

As an engagement tool, we actually found that dressing up wasn’t quite such a good idea for us personally. Visitors seemed to assume that we were part of our exhibit, and didn’t tend to talk to us; they preferred to talk to the MUSA-badge-wearing curatorial assistants who were supporting us; and that meant that discussions tended to focus on ‘what’s that?’ (brain coral, bat skeleton etc) rather than on the historical questions we wanted to encourage. Still, you live and learn.