Mr Horniman’s Grand Tour!
Museums, Objects, and Community1999 – 2001
During the late 1990’s I ran a community outreach programme for a small national museum. Standing atop a big hill and set in a beautiful garden, you can find The Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, Southeast London.
Always a free museum, it was donated to the people of London by tea trader, philanthropist, and avid collector Frederick Horniman. Popular with families and community groups, this was where I learned so many skills I would bring to my different storytelling and educational work.
Using objects from the museum’s education handling collection, I told stories about a myriad of different things and asked questions more than ever! On the road in a bright red van, wearing a Victorian tailcoat, and with a stuffed fox for company, I performed in more than 200 community venues across London. Playing Frederick, our museum founder, I was able to reach out to people who felt museums were perhaps alien, or simply for other people.
By the end of Mr Horniman’s Grand Tour, I’d had contact with more than 5000 people. Through this project I had started to understand how people learn, why objects and collections are so important to many of us, and how a story can bring something material, seemingly odd or uninteresting, to life! I also started to understand what ‘culture’ is.
This work, as a young man in my mid-twenties, underpinned much of what I still believe today. I remain a massive advocate of object-based learning, too. We can use it, fruitfully, in a variety of different contexts.
I also had the chance to be part of developing a hands-on gallery at the museum. You can see it here:
