Architecture for kids podcast with Morag Calderbank Learning Manager at Sir John Soane’s Museum

I am taking part in the podcast to raise awareness of the wonderful work we do here at Sir John Soane’s Museum to inspire and engage children and young people in architecture and the arts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast. I'm your host, António Cablón. I'm a trained architect, an architectural educator and founding director of award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to practitioners and creatives that share the same passion as I do, to inspire and to engage children and young people to shape their built environment and the creative industries. The podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Wells School of Architecture, Cardiff University. My guest today is Morad Kolderbank. the new learning manager at Sir John Soren's Museum. Prior to joining the museum, she had a varied professional career including learning roles within the Houses of Parliament, United Kingdom Supreme Court and Museum of Richmond. In 2012, Morag gained a Master's in Learning and Visitor Studies in Museums from the University of Leicester. And in 2018, she qualified as primary teacher with a PGCE from the University of Buckingham. She's passionate about experiential and performative learning. Morag, thank you for coming to talk to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

What subjects were you good at school and what subjects did you excel at school if they were different?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

Yes, that is an interesting question. Something they'll think about this. I think I really enjoyed... History and drama. I was really better at drama than I was at history but it's also quite good at English so it's very humanities based. I really loved history just because of the whole critical thinking aspect of it and just fascinated by how people lived in the past and how their lives were different but also sometimes they had the same problems that we face today. Drama, I do really enjoy performing. I don't know if I was the best actress but I've certainly gone on to use that in a way to various tour guiding roles when I was older. Probably the three humanities subjects I did quite well and I really enjoyed them.

SPEAKER_00: 2:15

Did they influence your career paths that you chose?

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

Yes definitely especially with history I think even as a teenager I was on the big bus as a tour guide across London that was kind of my first taster in how you can explain history to a wide audience and I really enjoyed it and I always just find there's just so much new information you can get through history there's so many topics to uncover and every place that I've worked I've found about new aspects of in history for example at the moment I'm learning about the history of architecture something I haven't sort of delved into much before so it definitely has influenced all my roles really throughout my career.

SPEAKER_00: 2:52

Do you Do you remember what was your defining moment where you decided what it was that you were going to do and how did that happen? I

SPEAKER_01: 2:59

was actually very young at primary school. I was taken on a school trip with my class to the London Transport Museum. And there I saw a woman who took us around. She was the tour guide or the education facilitator at the time. And I just thought to myself, what an absolutely wonderful job. She was enjoying herself. She was explaining the history behind these vehicles in a really interesting way. She was engaging us through her body language and her use of questions. And I just couldn't believe this was somebody's job. And even from the age of seven, I thought to myself, that is really what I want to do. I want to work within the heritage sector and be explaining things to other people.

SPEAKER_00: 3:40

Did you feel supported when you made those choices?

SPEAKER_01: 3:43

Interestingly, when I was at university doing my undergraduate, which was American Studies at the University of Sussex, I did go along to a careers advisor and I explained, I think at the time I called myself, I wanted to be a museum education coordinator. And the lady wasn't too keen on me doing that, very much said, this is a very competitive industry. Is there something that you may be a better fit for? So wanted to be too off-putting. So I was a bit surprised at that. And I think being told that something is competitive actually often isn't that helpful, especially if you're not a particularly overly confident person, which I wasn't. In that way, not really supported, I would

SPEAKER_00: 4:21

say. You have worked in a few organisations and quite renowned organisations as well. Tell us about that trajectory from that time when you started right until now the learning manager at the Sir John Sowen Museum.

SPEAKER_01: 4:34

Oxford University, my main job that had was being a visitor assistant at the Houses of Parliament, introducing people to the building, trying to help them understand the democratic process. I was also leading architectural tours and tours for primary school students and secondary schools. I was really lucky to be able to do a subcomment during that role and work for the education centre there. They were looking at changing their tour script, which was quite history focused, quite didactic, wasn't very inclusive or interactive. And I worked with a small team to really change that. And at the time we were focusing on the citizenship curriculum, which really teaches young people about how to engage with the democratic process, be it learning how to protest, learning how to write appropriate letters to MPs. We made this really exciting tour where we were having these mini debates as we went all through the Houses of Parliament. We were going up to the House of Commons, watching the debates, we were coming down, having conversations about those. So it became a much more lively and interesting interesting educational session for them and because I enjoyed that so much I looked up whether or not there was such a thing as doing a master's in learning in museums or heritage spaces. And fortunately, I came across the University of Leicester's course, which is basically that, learning and visitor studies in museums and galleries. And I did that two-year course whilst I worked at the House of Parliament, distance learning. And after two years at Parliament, I took on a similar role at the Supreme Court. That had only just recently opened across the road, Westminster, and they were really looking to build up some sort of education service. Again, I was facilitating tours and very much using everything that I was learning from my MA to make those tours very engaging and sort of got involved in starting these debate days which was where we would get local schools in, secondary schools to work with professional lawyers and they would be looking at Supreme Court cases and they would be arguing and debating these often quite complex arguable points of law we'd make it very accessible for them and then they would be presenting in the real courtroom their case back and more often than not people such as Baroness Hale, Lord Wilson, these justices would come down and they would watch the debate and they would offer feedback to these young people on how they performed, what they could do better. And we always got such positive feedback about this. And I feel it's so important for young people to understand the law a bit better and also just spark that inspiration that maybe this is something they could do that they might not have thought of before. I really enjoyed my time there and I worked at the Supreme Court for about four and a half years. Following that, I worked at the Museum of Richmond. which is a local history museum. This is very much focused in learning sessions for the local history of the area, with local schools. Again, this is a really interesting time. A lot of my role was focused on fundraising. So when I saw an opportunity to train to be a primary school teacher, because I was so passionate about learning at that time, I thought I would give that a go. But I did train to be a primary school teacher after about two years at the Museum of Richmond. It wasn't for me. And fortunately, there was a maternity cover at the So I was able to apply for that and I was back in the heritage world. And since then, I moved on to this role here, really. And so it's been lots of different jobs, but also very much a theme of learning, heritage, learning. history, getting young people engaged and sparking inspiration. It

SPEAKER_00: 8:08

will be quite interesting to talk about what is a master's in learning and visitor studies in museums.

SPEAKER_01: 8:14

Yes, a lot of people when you tell them that you've done some sort of qualification in museums will think that's about learning how to be a curator. But actually, this is slightly different. It's more about how you can help people understand the exhibitions and heritage sites that are available. It might be about writing appropriate interpretation panels it might be devising learning sessions for English of speakers of other languages and how you would go about that so looking about how learning sessions in museums do actually differ from classroom sessions so although you might be following the national curriculum you have these things called generic learning outcomes which are much more sort of social based and much more about having an experience that's very memorable to you and how can you get that and how can you evaluate it? So it's basically the structure of providing engagement in museums and not so much about putting on the exhibition yourself. It's everything that comes after that or with that in a way about making it accessible.

SPEAKER_00: 9:15

You are here at the Sir John Sorens Museum since June, I think. Tell us a little bit about the role entails. What programs do you have and what is your vision for this new role?

SPEAKER_01: 9:27

I joined the museum in mid-June of this year. The position is learning manager. My role day to day is about coordinating the learning sessions that happen at the museum. And these are a variety of them. So we have a learning officer, Taluda, who looks after all the schools program and I will sort of oversee that. So we have key stage two sessions for primary school, We have science-based ones, rocks and soils, but we also have a lot of history-focused ones, such as ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks. Most of these are done by freelancers, but I will oversee those and occasionally step in and help with those workshops as well, look at evaluating those and always constantly thinking, how can we improve those? We also have a secondary school program, which we are developing. We have a classics tour and a general tour, but we are in the process of making a Georgian- history tour. This links in with what I'm really keen to do is that many schools from especially the secondary sector, it's mainly grammar schools, independent schools, private schools that are coming to the museum or seem to be hearing about that. We're really keen to expand our secondary school offer and get state schools in from local areas but also further afield. So that's what I'm really interested in doing, really expanding our offer. What's wonderful about the school's offer is it's free. There's a lot of managing the budget, the free dances that part of my role but also a large part of it is organizing all the informal learning projects so for instance we run a series of family workshops some of those are free we've got one coming up on beastly board games we're going to look at different creatures within the museum and come up with characters to make our own snakes and ladders we had some over the summer and where we made our dream houses out of lego and we were able to use the beautiful lincoln's fields just opposite for that for our summer workshop and we also just do more formal workshops, which would be four hours here working with a freelancer. We've got one coming up on the gleaning Georgians. Coming up with those ideas, either I'm running them myself or I'm booking a freelancer to do that for the informal learning side. We also have this amazing set of architectural clubs. There's Building Explorers, which is an after-school club for three local primary schools, which is just wonderful. It runs all year. It has 20 children who sign up and they get these 30 sessions a just wonderful contents from an artist and facilitator, like all different subjects. They were looking at Don Henge last week. They've done trips out to Dr. Johnson's house and museum. They've obviously got our museum. to use as well. That club runs very well. I've also got three others which is the architectural drawing course, the young architects club and the new architects club. They will all be starting quite soon and they're for various age groups and again they take certain themes about architecture in particular for these clubs and they run with that for a duration of usually six to nine weeks. The new architects club which is for 11 to 14 year olds for instance are doing a London project as their theme. Each week they'll take a different theme maybe architecture in London and they will discuss that. They might go out and do some sketching of different buildings. They are going to have a week on protests. They're going to look at all of the fonts that's used and the design of protest banners. And eventually they'll be doing a three-week project where they're going to design and construct out of paper a certain, probably like a dream house or a dream building of their own based on zones, but also to show the aspects of London. Organising those clubs is administrative from my side mainly I'm there as an assistant during the clubs to kind of help and engage the students. a little bit more. We also have something which is called Art Space that we're really proud of, which is for older community groups. And they come for six weeks, usually over summer, again working with a freelancer who is an artist. And it's a very much like a social aspect of the museum for them. They get to come, have conversations, have a nice cup of tea. And then we'll choose one of the themes of the room. We're looking at portraits, for example. And we like to go and study the painting of Sir John Stones and then discuss what portrait you would have and decorate frames. They've also done plaster work, they've done printing work and the feedback from Artspace has been amazing. It's a project that's gone on I believe for eight years now and is one of the things that we're really very, very proud of. Other aspects of my job is finding organisations to collaborate with. I've recently been working with Open City to run an architectural course for local students in London. Very good, we work with an organisation called Elements who works with care leavers people who have accessed care facilities they've come and done an art project with us as well so there's a lot going on we're always looking to do new projects we're looking for new community groups that we haven't worked with before I was just speaking today about we would like to do a similar art space content with people who have mental health problems or who have access mental health services looking to provide the best offer that we can so that people from all walks of life can find out about Sir John Stone's life his house the art, the collections, but also get a little bit of inspiration to think about architecture in a different way, which I think everybody who comes to museum does anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 14:47

Talk about these local three schools that you work with. Who can apply?

SPEAKER_01: 14:51

After School Club for Building Explorers is actually an offer that's only available to our three local primary schools. And the reason for that is, is that we can walk to those schools and we can pick up the children there and bring them back. Fortunately, it's not something that we can offer to a wider audience. However, Our Young Architects Club and our New Architects Club and our Architectural Drawing Club is very much open to everybody, the public. We have the information on our website. It does cost, it's£10 per session. We have a limited number of bursaries, which we are able to offer, and we're hoping each year this will be increased. I know the New Architects Club, I think one third of them are supported by bursaries. That's something that we feel is important. But yeah, it's very much open to anyone. There's still space, actually, on the Young Architects Club, which is from ages 7 to 11. If you fancy it, then check out the website.

SPEAKER_00: 15:46

I'm just looking at the drawing front of us, and I was thinking, when these kids experience the museum for the first time, what is their impression? what is the impact that this building has on them?

SPEAKER_01: 15:57

I think what's so exciting about working at Sir John Soane's Museum, and it was certainly similar in the Houses of Parliament actually, is that just absolute wow factor of this building. Not only when they're coming in, they can't believe this is someone's home, but just the... way in which everything is displayed where it's very much in your face almost and then when they get to the painting room you get nothing but gasps when you find out that not only are there 38 or so paintings on display that they can see anyway which are all stunning but the walls open up to reveal layers and layers of more painting the fact that this building is so theatrical It's so original. They always really enjoy it. And I think that's why we do have a good uptake because once people have been to the zone, they love it. Basically, you either fall into two categories. You don't know about the zone or you've been there and you absolutely love it. It's the same response from the children. And because every room is really different and it has its own character, it offers just so much content for learning. Even if you want to do something based particularly on art or you want to look at domes or we have whole sessions dedicated to columns. You can find so much variety. And even the light in the stained glass windows. I mean, the children agree with us all. It's very simple to explain. You can see the stained glass window, the effect that it creates, making the paintings come to life as if you really are in Italy. They understand that it's a lovely building for being able to explain clearly. It's a lot of enjoyment for the children and they love coming into the museum to work in here when they can. Otherwise, where they're working is actually a dedicated education centre in the bottom of the museum. We're made of three different houses. Number 14 in the basement, we call it the art room, is an area for when most of our education sessions take place. But it leads very much into the museum. when we need it to.

SPEAKER_00: 17:52

What do you think is the impact of these programs that you deliver here to children and young people? What do you think is the impact on their lives, as well as what will be the impact on the built environment?

SPEAKER_01: 18:04

What's wonderful about this museum and even in the history of Sir Jonathan Stones himself who of course was not always a sir he was the son of a bricklayer he worked incredibly hard if you look at his career it's just a matter of very much hard work just how he became almost so successful I think there is that ethic that comes across that you can do anything that you want to do that you put your mind to if you're really serious about it you can through his own personal story I think that helps children and young people believe in what they want to do. I think even when we're doing history tours, maybe even the ancient Greeks, our freelancers are very keen to interweave aspects of architecture that they might not have thought about. I think in the primary and secondary curriculums at the moment, there is not really much they know about that. Taking away, even just knowing what the word architecture is, is a bonus for us, which they do. When they come in, we might say, who is Sir John stones. You know what his job is. You might get one out of 30 who understood the word architecture, but then afterwards they're like, wow, this man, he designed parts of London. He made everything really original to his own taste, his own interesting designs, having that little bit of understanding. I think some of them may not have thought of architecture as a career, especially for secondary school groups or college students who would now actually think, oh, I could do this. This is an interesting area I'd like to look into. even if it's things like understanding a bit more about interior design that they might not have thought of before. For me, if people come away just looking at buildings differently, that's what I absolutely love, just getting children and young people to look up, and for everybody, not even just for children and young people, and see the architecture around us, see the stories that all these buildings are looking at, so they can just see things a little bit differently. I think that helps as well. The feedback we get is always really positive from school groups, and we have a lot of people we were just discussing today about students And these volunteers and assistants to the

SPEAKER_00: 20:31

workshops. Who are these people in the sense of what is their background, what are their interests and what is their interest in being part of this?

SPEAKER_01: 20:38

Well, at Schools Workshop, we have around 10, call them learning freelancers, who come and lead some of our projects, lead some of the school sessions for us. And they come from a variety of different backgrounds. Some of them have been teachers themselves. We have a couple who spent time as secondary school teachers. But most of them have got careers where they were artists and they do the some side. Some of them are in fact architects. The person Wilson who is leading a new architects club. He is an architect as well. They come from all different backgrounds which is also really great because it adds that different knowledge set. For our school sessions we have three freelancers usually. So if you have an artist, an architect and a teacher you can imagine that the quality of of the set of films quite exceptional. Usually because of the schedule, they will work in other buildings as well. We have people who work at the British Museum, who work at the Wallace Collection. who also come and work here as well. So real varied backgrounds, but a lot of them actually are professional in terms of being artists and architects as well, which I think is really beneficial for the role.

SPEAKER_00: 21:43

Going back to the programs you offer here, you talked about you are planning on developing a program for the children and young people with disabilities. How far is that and what does that look like? Do you feel that far already?

SPEAKER_01: 21:56

Probably not as far as I would like to be on that. However, we do offer tailored bespoke learning sessions for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We might offer a unique tour for them with specialist freelancers who also worked in that environment before. It's just a tailoring session to make it maybe more hands-on, keeping the language different and more accessible in that way. But what I'd like to do is a little bit like what we do with our Artspace project for older people, which is where it's like a social environment. The museum is closed on Tuesdays. They're usually for conservation purposes, but we do have the opportunity to use the space and it's much more quiet because it's not open to the public. Engage a group in that way is my plan. To use the museum space for inspiration and then do some sort of facilitated art therapy basically is what I would like to do but it's very much just in the planning process at the moment but it's something we hope to

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

move forward with. You also have different nights or night evening events I think for young people what are they about and regular are they?

SPEAKER_01: 22:58

We're very lucky at this museum to have something called a youth panel which I believe some other museums have I think the Tate has a youth panel as well. Every two weeks we have a group of 15 to 24 year olds who come and meet then to ways in which they would like to see learning sessions progress at the museum but also come up with ideas for events come up with ideas even for temporary exhibitions as well just generally feedback to us what young people are thinking what their interests are which is really beneficial for us. The youth panel is based on what's called a co-production model. I would be the learning expert, but we have curators and the drawing curators, for instance, involved in sessions. They can discuss and be the experts, but really the sessions are sort of led by them in a way. They make their own rules about how the sessions are going to go. As part of that, the museum holds every once a month, I think on a Friday, at the end of the month, we have a sewing late. And these are ticketed events where the Seine is open after hours and usually it has maybe some performance aspects or it's just a time for you to come and see the museum at a different time. It will have a bar. It's just kind of a bit more exciting doing it after dark. But the youth panel are having their own late event and they are planning it currently. They ran one before but then because of COVID they didn't have a second one after that. I think they might have had a virtual one. I believe this is Maybe the second or third one they're doing. Tickets should be£10 for people under 18. And they... came and worked with some of our archivists during the youth panel meetings and they found out all about Sir John the Saint's grand tour. So he took this really big tour. We call it kind of like a gap year. That way he discovered lots of architecture and beautiful things in Italy. And he obviously wrote diaries and made sketches of all the things that he saw. And this has become the influence for the youth panel. That's what they had decided and that's what it's going to be themed on. The grand tour, they still have maybe passports, I think, for each of the rooms. It's going to be themed around a different country. There's going to be photo booths. There's going to be costumes. But they have chosen a few items that are going to be on display. They said John Soane's diaries and drawings as well that you wouldn't normally get the opportunity to see. The Youth Panel runs these once a year. But a lot of the last few months has been the planning process for that this autumn. We'll be recruiting new members of the Youth Panel. It's a very inclusive process. We ask people to apply. We also advertise colleges and schools and youth groups in the local areas and careers advisors where we can. And you can apply for the role and you'll be able to deliver a one minute presentation on an object of your choice. And it can be any object. And we interview everybody who applies. So please feel free to apply. The interview isn't scary. It's just really why you would like to be part of the youth panel, but also what we can offer you. We're not actually looking for people who've got loads and loads of experience of working in museums. I don't want really someone who's running a debate site at school. We want people who this can really, really help and benefit them. Maybe they're interested in marketing when they're older, communications, could be heritage, could be arts, could be architecture. And there's lots of reasons to get involved. Obviously free, please do feel free to apply or let people know. Again, the details of the youth panel are on our website.

SPEAKER_00: 26:20

One last question. Is that a question I should have asked you and I haven't asked you? And what is that question?

SPEAKER_01: 26:25

The one question you should have asked me is about a famous character within Sir John Soane's museum who is not a human. Do you want to ask me about Fanny the dog?

SPEAKER_00: 26:38

Yes, please.

SPEAKER_01: 26:39

So the thing that everybody loves to talk about is the little dog that belonged to Sir John Soane's wife, Eliza, called Fanny. And she was beloved by the Soane family. And Eliza used to take her on trips across the country with her on holiday. And when she used to write letters, she used to put Fanny the dog on in the ink and then sign it off on the letters back to Sir John Stone. Sadly Eliza passed away quite young and her dog succeeded her and Sir John Stone then looked after Fanny the dog so you find lots of portraits of Fanny around the house. She features a lot in the shop but also we have a new family trail and for family groups to come in and do and she featured a lot on that as well. She's got her own book and yeah, you just see a lot of her around. Interestingly, she also has her own gravestone, almost like a big tomb in the grounds of the museum, which you can see as well. She's a very important part of the museum that we always love to share.

SPEAKER_00: 27:39

I look forward to following up the different workshops that you do and eventually to speak to some of the kids that participate in this workshop.

SPEAKER_01: 27:46

That would be wonderful. Yes, definitely like to do that. Thank

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

you. Thank you very much to my guests today, to all the listeners and please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your rating and the review recommend us to your friends and family and to find out more about it visit our websites and follow us on Instagram, Arch for Kids CIC, Twitter, Ant Kaplaun, LinkedIn, Ant Kaplaun, C-A-P-E-L-A-O. And please join me again next week for another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast, brought to you in collaboration with the Build Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust, and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.