Tuesday, 11 June 2013

YAG Workshop, 25 May 2013

The Youth Advisors did some bookmaking today to make photo diaries of some recent workshops. Shauna taught them how to make an accordion book, using paper with Dutch Wax and Adinkra fabrics printed on. Lucas shares his highlight of the workshop:

'The best part was making the books, because they turned out rather professional'


We also played a new game with new Youth Participation Volunteer, Laura. Abs was blindfolded and we had to see if we could steal Shauna's noisy keys before she noticed



 
We also looked at words we can use to describe how we feel about things. These words can be used in the photo diaries to explain how we felt during workshops and not just happy or bored
 

 
We then filled the books with photos and stories from previous workshops
 

After lunch we met with Tracey Weller, Archive Learning Officer at the Museum. She told us about her research into Indigo, a plant that was grown all over the world, but was also grown cheaply in America on plantations. The indigo was made into cakes and transported to the UK on merchant ships to make huge profits. It was then used to dye materials blue, including the Royal Navy uniform. Tracey had original archive material to show us.
 
We started by looking at maps, thinking about where materials come from
 

 
 Tracey told us about Dutch Wax and Indigo, both traded as part of European Empires


We got to see manuscript items from hundreds of years ago that told us about Indigo and life for merchant sailors (some had very neat hand writing and they ate a lot of meat!)

 
We really liked finding out about Indigo and learning about the things that were traded. The objects were so personal to the time period and it was amazing to see them so close and get to touch them.

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