Back in 2020, I wrote the article Supporting Learning about the HOPE project at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. That was a few months into the lottery-funded project which comes to an end this Spring. They say that time flies when you’re having fun and that must explain my disbelief that three years have passed so quickly.
I’d been part of the pilot project that had led to the award of the funding for the main project, so I was delighted to be recruited by the museum as a HOPE Learning Officer, alongside my new colleagues Susie Glover and Kate Jaeger. It didn’t get off to the smoothest of starts: we’d been appointed but then the country went into lockdown. Our main focus was schools outreach but we were all stuck at home. That’s why the article above was about supporting learning. We quickly produced resources that parents could use at home and teachers could set on line for their pupils. Our first summer school was entirely online!
We were glad to have been able to help out at a difficult time but what we had really signed up for was sharing the amazing world of insects with kids in schools. In autumn 2020, armed with a daily Covid testing regime, hand sanitiser, masks and visors, we were able to do just that. The response we got from teachers and children was wonderful and in November I wrote this post on Working for Hope (based on a series of tweets I wrote for the Museum’s account) about our aims, what we had done, and some of the questions we’d had from kids. It became clear to us that, after the restrictions of lockdown, they were eager to reconnect with nature.
With the drop in insect numbers that comes with the first frost, our programme shifted to activities that explored insects within the Museum collections and to other aspects of outreach, including digital. We started to build what was to become a very successful community of young entomologists, aged 10-14, through the creation of a weekly blog called ‘Crunchy on the Outside’ alongside school holiday events that allowed us to explore aspects of entomology in more depth than we could in our school discovery days. In this way, kids who we met in schools, at the museum, or who first encountered the project online, could pursue their interest in insects and meet like minded peers (“I’ve found my people”). The online blog provided continuity for this growing community, providing a link in between events.
In Spring 2021 I was ready to get stuck into a full programme of school visits that we had originally planned to start after Easter and running through to October. During the school Summer holiday we would run the in-person ‘Insect Investigators’ summer school. It felt really good to be back on track with the programme that we’d originally intended, but I was unexpectedly derailed from those tracks when I was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully, I was able to take part in the June and July school visits and the August summer school. We went behind the scenes at the Museum to learn about the main insect orders and their ecological importance, practiced identification in the University Parks, learned about macro photography amidst the flowering borders at Oxford Botanic Garden, and embarked on group science investigations at Harcourt Arboretum (“We’ve calculated there are 36,000 grasshoppers in the meadow!”) before sharing it all with family members and Museum Staff.
It was an excellent way to end the season because a course of chemotherapy in the Autumn meant I had to isolate from most people, especially school kids with their mix of coughs and sniffles.
The response to my situation from the team was wonderful. Our team leader, Sarah Lloyd took care of everything, so that work issues were not a concern, and Kate and Susie stepped into the breach to run ALL the school visits not to mention teacher CPD, after school clubs, and museum events. I focussed on the digital aspects, including the blog, tapping away on my laptop at home, communicating with researchers who were providing posts for the blog, and contributing to meetings remotely.
So many others in the wider team at the Museum were supportive and helpful in myriad ways. I must also add my thanks to Neil Stevenson, my line manager for my other role at The Bodleian Libraries, who was similarly helpful in my other role, at the Bodleian Libraries. I know that not everyone receives such a positive response from their workplace following a cancer diagnosis, so I was very relieved to have any work concerns lifted away, so I could focus on treatment.
January 2022 meant the start of radiotherapy. Although I can’t imagine this is a factor for most patients, I was pleased that the course of daily treatments would be completed in March, just before the insects started buzzing again as the weather began to warm up. At last I could get stuck into the outreach programme.
I found that summer truly joyous! Our visits were a mix of new schools and those who had rebooked and our ‘Crunchy’ community of young entomologists was going from strength to strength, with many familiar faces at each gathering and some we had first met in primary classes now at secondary school. It was also good to see how many schools were developing their site for nature and incorporating this into their work with children. The 2022 summer school was, once again, a delightful highlight with a new group of eager young people benefiting from our now-established model.
All things must pass, however, and Autumn saw Kate return to a full-time teaching role and Susie embark on school-based teacher training. We were able to finish our time with one last ‘Crunchy’ event at the end of August; building pooters from recycled materials then using them to catch insects!
The last school visits of the project Took place during the autumn and I also hosted groups at the Museum. The focus moved to the final evaluation and the legacy of the project. This will include both physical and digital aspects. The resources and activities will continue to be used with children and other audiences who visit the Museum and the lessons learned from successfully engaging 10-14 year olds will be used to continue to support this group. Digital resources will be integrated within the Museum’s existing website and Learning Zone. A Peppered Moth game which Susie developed to teach natural selection will become an exciting online simulation and the insects from the popular ‘To Bee or not to Bee’ ID activity have been digitised for an online version. I have written and scheduled blog posts through February and the plan is to then integrate this into the Museum’s existing online activity.
The project culminated on 8 February with the official opening of the Ellen Hope Gallery at the Museum, a new public space for entomology. At the same time I move on to another exciting role (watch this space) into which I will carry all that I have learned, and the many happy memories, from my time with HOPE.
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