Museum Student Educator: a curator in the making.

Since June, I have joined a volunteer program at the University of Glasgow which looks to bring students from all subject backgrounds to give talks in the Hunterian Museum and the Hunterian Art Gallery. Known as the Museum Student Educators, our role is to come up with 20 minute tours to give to visitors. These tours include the Museum Highlights, the Antonine Wall, the Dinosaur Trial, Lord Kelvin and the Art Gallery which is currently doing an exhibition on the German Revolution.

My first day as a Museum Student Educator talking about the Clachaig Skull

I am one of the students who is doing the Museum Highlights tour. Whilst we have to include some artefacts that are the most popular to the museum, like Lady Shepenhor, the Egyptian Mummy, I have also personalized this tour with a few of my own artefacts that I have found in the main exhibition space and deem of interest. I noticed, for example, that few people were taking the time to look at the musical instrument case. Having done an assignment on the musical instruments, part of a collection belonging to Professor Bernard Hague, a former professor of Engineering at the University, I decided to look specifically at the Serpent instrument. The poster for the Hunterian near the lift shows the musical instruments. including this instrument, and so I thought it relevant to let visitors know more about it.

For any readers of my blog who are perhaps looking or already doing guided tours in a museum, or other heritage building, you will know how valuable our work as tour guides can be to visitors. Despite only having given a few talks, I have already received feedback from visitors who said that they have learnt a lot more than they would usually have done if they walked around the museum by themselves. This begins to show that despite the increase in the use of technology in museums, human communication is still essential to the modern age. A machine, for instance is unable to interact on a personal level with the visitors. I always like to know where my visitors are from so I can pick out some of the artefacts that may be of particular interest to them. For instance, the locals like looking at the Bearsden shark. Bearsden is a town north of Glasgow. I also like to get the visitors to pick out their favourite crystal from the mineral case on which they like to marvel at the different shapes and forms of crystals. The mesolite crystal seems to be a particular favourite which always reminds me of the pin art toy I had growing up.

MuSE volunteers also get to participate in any extra events or activities that the Hunterian museum is putting on. One of the events I participated in, that actually got me interested in volunteering for the Hunterian, was the Robert Burns' Night held in January. This was a night at the museum where families could come and visit the museum after hours and also participate in arts and crafts activities, further to this, the museum also had a reading of the 'Tam O' Shanter' done by students and other young people. I was one of the lucky few to read part of the poem. There was also someone in costume as Burns and a poetry trail with some of Burns's poems relating to artefacts in the museum. As a volunteer I really enjoyed being able to help out with the feedback, and set up of the event. You begin to realize that there are many jobs to be done in a museum and any experience is relevant to your CV.

Night at the Museum: Burns on Stage

For any students looking to study at the University of Glasgow I would thoroughly recommend the MuSE program. You get to make new friends, incorporate your studies into the museum, but most of all this experience demonstrates a lot of valuable skills including communication, research, organisation and team work.