Store Tours

I joined one of the fortnightly store tours last night (21st Feb) despite having spent weeks in the store with Claire, the former project development officer and Joan another volunteer, choosing items for the new displays. I suppose I was just curious to see what the Museum Professionals -Anne Owen and Mark Macleod - were doing to make the tours entertaining. It was a good fun evening with the eight "tourists" squeezing up and down the narrow aisles. The store tours are a great idea to keep people aware of the museum while it closed for redevelopment. The two "guides" had clearly done their homework and were able to answer most of the questions put to them. Joining us on the tour was Tanya the Forres Gazette reporter. I hope there will be an article about it in a future issue. Hopefully this blog will be mentioned too. Maybe there will be a slow news week!
Having been on courses with some other museumites its clear we are very lucky having such a first class store. The store holds upwards of 33,000 objects in a mixture of shelves, racks and pull-out baskets and, like the Tardis, looks bigger on the inside. I know from speaking to Mark that Anne and he enjoy getting feedback from the public and its great to see how the learning process works both ways on these nights.
Once Mark gets a chance to come up with a timetable of training afternoons and store tours it will be published here. I have been quietly nagging Mark about it but the poor lad can only do so much in one day! Anyway congratulations to the two professionals for an interesting evening. If you're interested in going on a tour leave a comment to this post and I'll let Mark and Anne know. (Chris)