Clowning 101 – The Eureka! way

Play is at the heart of everything that we do here at Eureka!, and one of the ways we thought we could bring even more play into the workplace and museum generally was through clowning - Not your average face paint, big shoes and pie in the face clowning, but by bringing the ideologies and techniques behind the performance into our day-to-day museum duties. So Clown Training 101 was devised and, with a handful of enablers, the Eureka! Clowning team was born. We began by looking at Victorian clowns from the travelling circuses up to modern day stereotypical clowns, and their archetypes and lives. We then took some of the elements of clowning and created our own ways of clowning.

What makes a Eureka! clown

Our clowns are childlike in their attention to things: everything is new and amazing - they explore every object to its full extent. They are imaginative and creative - everything can be anything to a clown - a shoe is a telephone, a scarf is a bridge, and even a flute is a stethoscope.

They are repetitive. They will try things out again and again, often to fail, over and over again; no matter how many times they see that banana skin, they will always slip on it.

Clowning is the most emotionally honest form of performance; they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Clowns laugh, cry, show their joy and despair through their very emotional facial expressions.

And, most importantly, a clown is a direct link to the audience. During a performance they break the fourth wall by acknowledging the audience, showing things to them and even getting audience members involved in their antics.

Jill, Tasha and Ross discover something shocking!

Wearing the red nose

After our research and a few warm-up exercises we were given our red clowning noses. We were not to take these off as they were the prop that marked us as clowns.

Clowns are very silly - they are the subject of ridicule, and if we wished to be clowns we had to be silly. This was quite daunting for some of the group as they did not want to look like fools in front of their team leaders, colleagues and friends. In an attempt to break down everybody's inhibitions we were told to pick a space in the theatre. The music started, and we had to take to the stage as clowns, looking at the audience and fully exploring the stage (ignoring the other clowns at first). A variety of strange props were thrown into the spaces such as hats, wigs, instruments and toys. We had to work with these props, using them as something they weren't actually made for, which must have been quite a sight for the team leaders watching - grown adults wearing red noses, with wigs as shoes and recorders used as a splint for a poorly finger! We then had to interact with the other clowns, making up little scenarios, whilst looking at and involving the audience, emphasising our emotions and facial expressions.

Becky looks on in horror as Darren & Claire are stuck on the other side of the gorge!

All restraint, inhibition and hesitation was now long gone and everyone was buzzing. We all had the techniques nailed and were in a great mood - making jokes, laughing along with everyone and offering ideas and suggestions to each other. As a final performance we were split into three teams of three, each given a scenario and asked to devise a performance: at first just improvising with the music, then structuring a beginning, middle and end. The three scenarios were:

1. There is a massive gorge that the clowns want to cross, but there is no bridge.
2. One clown is having a picnic when the other two appear, then one fly appears, followed by a swarm of insects attacking the clowns.
3. One clown has an illness, and eventually the other two catch it.

Becca, Dan and Abi notice the first of many flies to come and ruin their picnic

I was in group number 2, the picnic group. After a few run-throughs we decided that one clown should have the picnic all to himself, then the other two came but he would not share his picnic. The flies gradually appeared, one at a time, and the clowns began slapping themselves and each other in an attempt to get rid of the flies, which resulted in the picnic getting trodden on. Realising that the picnic had been ruined, the two clowns left the original clown alone with the remains of his picnic. By using a bit of slapstick, looking at the audience and exaggerating expressions we created a funny and successful 5 minute performance.

Bringing clowning into every day

After all three groups had performed we settled down and began to think about how we could  incorporate the clowning ideas into museum life, such as:

• Using audience participation and acknowledgement during our science shows and workshops.
• Exaggerating our expressions and actions to make things more exciting to watch.
• Bring some of the playfulness into our time in the galleries - act as if everything is new to us, therefore more exciting for us and the children there who really are experiencing objects for the first time.
• Devising a clowning show which we enablers can perform on an Up To You hour or as an event for the public, where we can get families involved in creating their own clowning show based on everything we learnt during the training.  This would be different from our existing 'Clowning Around' workshop, which is aimed at more traditional clowning with big costumes, facepaint and using props such as fake weights and rubber chickens.

  The Eureka! Clowning School's first graduates!

Our Clowning session has really given everyone involved such a boost to our ways of working, giving us new ideas and increased confidence in performing. We have loads of ideas about new things we can do in the galleries and ways to interact with kids - even the simplest of ideas such as putting on our red noses is full of potential for a better visitor experience.

Come and join us for a bit of Clowning Around in January 2012.

Becca McAusland

Enabler and Exhibitions Assistant

Welcoming Brownies, Cubs and Beavers to Eureka!

This November we’ve had a busy month with a number of special events for uniformed groups.

Over the first two weekends of November we welcomed 868 Brownies, Beavers, Cubs and their leaders to the museum to take part in the first ever Eureka! Badge Days. In previous years we’ve run badge days based on such themes as astronomy and circus skills but thought that this time we’d see if we could come up with something based around the themes explored in Eureka!

 
The Eureka! badge
The design of the badge (pictured) was inspired by the man behind the Eureka! name - Archimedes himself and the special one-day events were created to allow children to explore as much of the museum as possible, inspiring them to discover and learn through play.

Chew to the Poo
The highlight of the sessions was definitely our science show ‘From the Chew to the Poo’ which explores the ins and outs of our digestive system by following the journey of a banana and peanut butter sandwich from the moment it is eaten till the moment it is… …well you can guess the rest!

It was certainly a challenge coming up with a programme that really sums up the essence of the museum but I hope we managed it. We’ve had some great feedback from leaders so far and with one or two tweaks I think we’ll definitely be planning to do more Eureka! Badge days in the future.

A Night at the Museum

The other big event this month was our Sleepover on Friday 18th November. We haven’t held a sleepover here since March 2008, so many of the staff have never experienced spending the night in the museum and were just as excited as the children! It was great fun and all the children and group leaders really got into the spirit of the evening. The night can best be summed up by Stephanie Armitage of 3rd Yeadon Brownies who wrote…

"Eureka! hosted a brilliant sleepover which was attended by around 100 Brownies, Scouts and their leaders to celebrate Universal Children's Day.

The evening was packed with fun including clowning around, a splash workshop which was a fun, water-based science session (see the giant bubbles photos) and having the museum to ourselves to explore all evening. Arriving just after 6pm, we were looked after by the Eureka! team until midnight when it was lights out time!

The girls and leaders had a brilliant time. The Eureka! staff were great fun & had organised an excellent evening of scientific fun. After supper everyone joined in with a selection of songs including the Meatball Song and Crazy Moose. It was great bedding down in the floor in the 'Sound Section' of the museum. The clunks and creaks of the building cooling down didn't seem to stop the girls getting to sleep. They were exhausted after such an action packed evening so even Brown Owl's snoring didn't disturb them. Other leaders and their groups were dotted around the building. The Eureka! staff slept upstairs in their offices!"

We’re holding two more sleepovers in 2012 on Friday 16th March and Friday 18th May, and we still have spaces available on both. These all night extravaganzas are open to schools as well as uniformed groups and are suitable for children aged 8-11yrs. For more information please email Jenny Parker.

You can view soe more photos from the sleepover in our Facebook Photo Album.

For further information about Girlguiding and how to join please visit the Girlguiding UK Website.

Jenny Parker, Eureka! Play and Learning Co-ordinator

Volunteering at Eureka!

Over the summer I volunteered at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum in Halifax. When I first started volunteering I hardly interacted with the children at all, but now I feel more than capable of meeting and engaging with children.

I have enjoyed volunteering very much, especially meeting children of different ages and from different backgrounds. I found working in the gift shop enjoyable, and learned all about the different aspects of the job from stock take, the paperwork required to make a gift shop run, keeping the shop fully stocked at all times, pricing, and customer interaction. I have also loved working with all the different exhibits, and have found that it has helped me to gain more confidence, particularly to interact with children and their parents.

The Eureka! Shop

I have done so much but, for me, my biggest successes are that I am more confident in myself and I have learned many transferable skills, from making action plans to improving my interpersonal skills, to name but a few. I also feel that my biggest achievement has been being able to work as a part of a team as, again, it has helped boost my confidence both with children and with the Eureka! staff.

I also feel that I can use these experiences in the future to help me with my autism. I have loved working at Eureka! as I found the environment calming and safe. I hope that the time I have spent at Eureka! and the experiences that I have gained will help me progress along the career path that is right for me. All the staff have been extremely friendly and helpful.

Eureka! is a fun and friendly place to work, and I highly recommend this experience to anybody else thinking about volunteering.

Michael Harris, Eureka! volunteer