On ‘Tour’ with Mission: Active Future

There’s so much to Enabler’s job, and not all of it is in the museum. Take last month. Along with two other Enablers, Sarah and Alistair, we were chosen to help bring Mission: Active Future out to Cross Flatts Park in Leeds as part of a Breeze on Tour event from 17 – 18 August. Thanks to funding from the Leeds Community Foundation, we ran eight free half hour sessions each day between 12 pm and 5 pm.

Mission: Active Future is a huge expanding trailer fitted out like a funky children’s gym, with activities such as steppers, bikes and rowing machines. The activities exercise the body and the brain, so there are computer games about health and fitness and tactile activities such as building up the bones and muscles of an arm.

At the start of each session we show the children a DVD from ‘Activ8’; a group of 8 cartoon children from the future. (The future is a bleak one with, among other things, overgrown tennis courts and football players unable to finish a game because they are so out of breath). The children are challenged to change that future by adopting a healthy lifestyle now – starting with the challenges on the trailer.

We help with a fun warm up, and explain all 15 exhibits before setting the children off on a circuit. They have a minute for each activity, so one of us is in charge of the stop watch and calling time. I like to add some variety, so I don’t just stick with ‘time to move on’. The sessions are short, so we leave enough time for the children to cool down and enter into a poster giveaway competition, which encourages the entire family to complete a further eight weeks of healthy activities.

Although Mission: Active Future is aimed at children from 6-11 years old we had some very cute 4 year old brothers and sisters joining in with some of the simpler activities – and one very enthusiastic have-a-go dad! It proved to be very popular with all the participants; we even had some of the children from the previous day having another go. It was summed up by one very polite little boy who came up to me afterwards and said: ‘Thank you miss; that was very fun’.

Once again though, we were multitasking. We arrived early Thursday morning to a lovely blue sky and friendly looking white clouds. After setting everything up, a photographer arrived. An enabler’s job is never short of variety; that morning we were going to be models in a photoshoot! It was a real giggle, posing for shots over the next hour. We applauded Mark, the driver from Marshalls, whose truck brought M:AF to Leeds. We leaned, tilted and above all, smiled, smiled smiled! I never realised that smiling could be such hard work, but to be fair there was a great deal of genuine laughter going around.

The Eureka! Team at Cross Flatts Park with Mission: Active Future

We left the park each day at about 5:45 pm, exhausted but with the feeling of a job well done. I know from feedback we’ve received from previous sessions, with both schools and general public, that Mission: Active Future and the Activ8 characters can have a really positive influence on children’s activity levels and, most important, in the words of one child, it’s VERY FUN! (And anything that gets children interested in a healthy lifestyle has to be good).

Overall it was an amazing event: the park was full of activities of all kinds. There were giant inflatables, including a ‘gladiators’ type course and an inflatable football pitch! There was paint balling, a climbing wall, a huge ‘Breeze has got talent’ marquee – and, of course, us.

I’m sure our Activ8 would like to see the kind of future envisioned by Thomas Edison when he said:  ‘The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but instead will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease’.

Visit the Mission: Active Future website to find out more and to meet the Active8.

Jill Ward is an Enabler at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum.