Jean Shipton Museum Activities & Engagement Officer Female / 59 / Leo
It was right after Easter when I interviewed Jean with WhatsApp. She had a good holiday and she was back to her volunteering role in Fulham Palace where she used to work.
Jean was teaching in a primary school for over 30 years. About 7 of those years she was in senior management and was the head at the primary school for 15 years. After that she came to Fulham Palace and was the educational officer for about 5 years. And then she decided to take retirement, at that point she was introduced to Jacqueline.
‘I think at the minute bizarrely, my favourite cafe it’s actually Elys. I just like that kinda group of people like older people and families in it.’
I was not surprised at all when listening to her teaching journey since what she demonstrated on the workshop was beyond professional. A lot of things Jean and I have chatted about during the design of workshops, including ‘Museum of the Future’ for Ursuline High School, really started me thinking about what ‘home’ is. I’m still exploring my answer, I would like to know how Jean describe hers.
‘To me personally it’s a place that you feel attached to and it’s your reference point. I don’t think it necessarily has to be a house or with people in it. The word home initially has a boarder meaning. So, if you say where’s home? Yorkshire is home. But my home as an accommodation place I live in is in Wimbledon. There’s where I live, but my home is actually in Yorkshire. So, I think it’s where you feel emotionally attached.’
Jean wouldn’t describe Wimbledon or Wimbledon Museum as home, instead, same as Jacqueline the museum makes Jean feel “at home”.
Words that she picked for the museum are:
‘Umm… It’s a phrase I don’t actually like it’s called ‘punch it above its weight’, which means bigger than it actually is, so it does bigger thing than it would suggest a small local museum. It’s highly professional. It also feels respected and care for the people who volunteer there.’
Yes, the museum is indeed doing something important especially to the next generation. This led the interview to the exciting part which Jean generously shared the process of designing learning activities for schools’ children that visit the museum.
1
I look at what the group are wanting. And then the connection with the history of Wimbledon. The WW2 one was easy because they wanted to know about Wimbledon during WW2.
2
What I would do is I look at the national curriculum and historical field and content. I would also look at the aims of Wimbledon Museum which is ‘making history here’, being part of the community, sharing history and learning more about Wimbledon. So, I make sure the workshops meet the national curriculum and fit with the objectives of the museum.
3
I’m not too familiar with the history, I have to do lots of reading. I will find a structure for the workshops, it’s normally a story or more often it’s a dilemma. Children have to use the information to make a decision on what they will do.
And then I’ll look at different activities and what could be done in the museum. I look at the practicality of that and sometimes we have to reshape them. Sometimes the museum has no resources or object, so I’ll source the object from for example Fulham Palace.
I love to see what else I can draw in. One of the things that is always good is to talk with people who knows. So, Jacqueline knows and Pamela the curator knows. Quite often I have to get a hook to hook everybody onto the story or theme. When you done the session, you talk to the team there to see what worked what didn’t, how we alter that.
For example, after that I knew one of the activities for the hope medal workshop needed to be making, writing or drawing, something physical.
‘Originally, I thought museum education will be quite easy, it’s just a longer lesson, but it’s not. If you are handling an item that is historical, you’ve got to know how to keep the object safe,
it’s quite a lot of bigger than what I thought it would be.’
Compared to schools, what is special with museum education?
‘You got more flexibility at what you are delivering. Secondly, you usually got access to something amazing. Wimbledon Museum is a special place with somebody who knows a lot more about the history. The other bit is you wouldn’t be assessed like you are in school, you are not beholding to people about how good it is. You are not accountable to parents or governors, you are accountable to your team in the museum.
You got to handle exciting and interesting things like when Norman brought out that V1 bomb and showed the Pelham school.
That was just like the museum’s gold moment, there’s no things better than that.
And in museum, you meet people like Norman and he can talk about his experiences. So, all that make museum education less accountable, less assessment, you’re there for a specialist reason and you know what you’re delivering while in school you get over a light touch over everything. And also you got to keep an eye on things like marketing and it’s a different network of people.
It is a really satisfying thing to do to be able to create activities that children enjoy and the main thing is making children understand the history do happen and the people in the past are not too dissimilar to us.
It’s worth valuating what we’ve got, especially in this country it’s so much stuff out there, the society is based on all the value in the past.’
What are the messages you want to pass on to the next generation?
‘ Y o u r h i s t o r y n d i n g i s i m p o r t a n t
r o u n
If you know more about it then you get a better sense of place and why you like to be there, and perhaps create a more cohesive community.
I asked Jean to talk about what volunteering mean to her.
It means to do something without payment and also almost without expectation. It’s your choice to volunteer, it’s about choice, how much or little you want to do and how involved you want to be.
It’s about joining a light-minded group of people; it’s about learning from others as well. It’s usually learning from the older generation, it’s really interesting just talking about things they’ve remembered.’
‘It’s about choice, enjoyment, contribution to the community and it also encourages you or so to carry on thinking and doing things.
Do you recommend younger people to also volunteer?
‘Definitely! Because if you going to have a successful institution,
you need people from different life, countries, languages to be able to bring different views to it.
For example your visual literacy, I’m learning quite a lot from you and also having opportunity to look at your work. And also it gives people in the younger generations ideas on careers, if not then it can be just a respect for older people and history, just to coming together of the common goal. I think it’s really good if everybody is involved and it makes the decision making better as well.’
How long do you think you will keep volunteering?
