Never work with pets and children?

The proposition

Tui Te Hau, Director Public Engagement, proposed something which initially sounded quite simple: To create an exhibition of precious objects with intermediate-age students from nine schools in the Wellington region using the co-design process. It sounded like an exciting project and I was keen to practice co-design methodology, bring students and their whānau into the National Library and get into hands-on exhibition-making. Let’s do this!

What is co-design?

Co-design is a creative process which allows the target audience to be an integral part of the creative process ensuring that the end product authentically represents and attracts your desired audience. The learning facilitators at the Library had recently attended workshops to learn about co-design, so were equipped with the many tools and methods to engage people in the process.

For example, there is an exercise called speed ideation where people write down as many ideas as they can in a set time and then pass their list on to the next person who adds their ideas. Doing this exercise together brings out a flood of — sometimes outrageous — ideas, that one person alone would never come up with.

The benefits of co-design are manifold; you get to know the audience or community you’re working with better, learning what’s important to them and you can accommodate their needs. Most importantly, using co-design methodology creates an exhibit or event which is ‘by, with and for’ the community – this methodology empowers communities and enriches GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Museums and Archives) sector visitor experiences. It also prevents you from putting much time and effort into organising something that is not attractive to your target audience.

Selecting schools

From the outset, we wanted a cross-section of schools in terms of decile, location, socio-economic spread and ethnic diversity. Nine schools became seven when we realised that the gallery space was too small for three schools exhibiting at the same time, and one school dropped out. The schools involved were Thorndon School, Kimi Ora School (a special-needs school), Pauatahanui School, Raphael House (Steiner School), Brandon Intermediate, Avalon Intermediate and Brooklyn School.

Kimi Ora School had eight students participating and the other schools selected 13-25 of their intermediate age students. Once the schools had flagged their interest we invited them to a teacher information session at the National Library.

Exhibition making

Creating an exhibition is harder than you might think. Many elements need consideration, concept design, budget, spatial design, exhibition title, label designs, colour schemes, installation, technology, approvals to use students’ photos, collecting the objects, looking after them and returning them, promotion… and then Covid-19!

Luckily we had some hugely talented and energetic people to help us.

Workshops

Originally, we had intended to run three workshops: two at the schools and one at the National Library for each school. Quite early on we realised this was overly ambitious and reduced it to two workshops per school: one at the school, one at the National Library.

Precious workbook

The first COVID-19 lockdown prevented us from visiting the schools as intended, instead, we developed the Precious workbook that we asked the teachers to complete with their students in preparation for workshop 1.

The Precious workbook offered activities relating to identity and culture and a range of questions to help students work out what is precious to them. The workbook helped students identify their precious object which they brought with them to the workshop. Workshop 1 then focused on activities involving object handling and care (measuring objects with gloves on, writing a condition report) as well as support them in developing their stories further.

Workshop 1

For workshop 1, three learning facilitators drove out to the school with a suitcase full of props and ran a two- and half-hour workshop. A photographer took student portraits and a photo of their object to be used on the labels.

Besides the photos and activities, the objectives for workshop 1 was to build relationships with the students by sharing our own precious objects with them and to warm them up to the idea of visiting the National Library and curating their own an exhibition.

Workshop 2

A couple of weeks later the students visited the National Library for workshop 2. This workshop was labour and staff intensive as we needed to video record each student’s introduction precious object story. The videos feature on the exhibition ipads using storytelling software called Curio.

We found it helpful if the students had a prepared, pre-rehearsed script. We would usually do two takes, one of the child reading the script and one talking about themselves and their objects in an interview, using their own words. They were much more relaxed in take two!

To help students feel relaxed in front of the camera, we added ‘voice warm-up’ and breathing exercises to the workshop schedule. What a difference they made!

While we rotated two students at a time through the recording studio, the rest of the group would be on tour (He Tohu exhibition and Precious exhibition) or doing an activity (planning their opening event, filling in loan agreements).

Finally, we took the students and their teachers on a basement tour to see the kilometres of books. Seeing the ‘telecart’ transporting books in action was a highlight for many. Most importantly, through spending time in the National Library and getting to know our staff, the children began to feel at home and relax in the space. It is their National Library, after all.

Homework: for the students and National Library staff

As homework, we asked the students to produce a short video about their school, and the teachers to write the introduction panel text. Historic photos of the school from our collection were juxtaposed with the recent group photo of the students at their school. It was a delight to see the school videos produced by the students and to see how technically savvy they are.

Our homework was to create the exhibition labels featuring a photo of the student, student introduction, a photo and story of the object as well as uploading content to the ipads and installing objects in the exhibition space.

Opening event

We made it! The children were excited to open their exhibition and cut the paper chain. The students ran the show with speeches, kapa haka, music and karakia kai. They were proud to share their work with their whānau.

What have we learned?

In hindsight (and we’re only halfway through the process) the Precious exhibition was an ambitious project — we underestimated just how time-consuming and complex the seemingly quite simple exhibition would turn out to be.

We found the co-design process extremely rewarding. Seeing the students’ precious family heirlooms, taonga gifted to them and favourite pets in the exhibition and connecting with them through their stories felt like an enormous privilege. The co-design process gave us an insight into the students’ lives and some of the loss of loved ones they had experienced in their short lives.

We were very proud of the Kimi Ora students who participated in the workshops with the help of their compassionate carers. Some students are non-verbal and in wheelchairs, but with the commitment of their families, their stories have been told. Children with special needs are often overlooked or excluded by society, so to bring them in and shine a light onto their personalities was a joy and added depth to the exhibition.

Putting the elements of the labels together, was often difficult as photos had not been taken of students or objects missing at the first workshop and had to be re-done or sent in by the school. Editing typos on the templates was time-consuming and we underestimated the time and effort spent on the label making. With practice and experience, our processes improved and we were better at communicating with the schools that students must bring their objects to the workshop.

Something we would possibly do differently is to hand over even more responsibility and control to the students. While they created most of the story and video content, we were standardising their scripts, putting them in templates and we were behind the camera. While this minimised the risks of the exhibition looking too ‘wild’ or not professional enough, it also limited the creative impetus of some students and made the exhibition a little too simple, in appearance.

Facilitating co-design is a learning process in itself and we certainly learnt a lot from ‘just doing it’!

Thank you!

We look forward to welcoming the students back again, with their whānau visiting the exhibition, coming to do research when at college or university or perhaps one day with their children. We are certain they will remember their time here, what they learnt and that this place is their place, and that they are always welcome at the National Library.

It turns out there are great rewards from working with pets and children!

More about Precious

Come and visit the exhibition — we'd love to share it with you if you are in Wellington

Explore what’s precious to you — by doing the activities in the workbook

Create a classroom exhibition — contact us for printed copies of the workbook, email us at contact@hetohu.nz

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all these people who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make the Precious exhibition possible.

• Celeste Skatchill — Studio C

• StoryInc

• Emily Loughnan — Curio

• Peter Ireland

• Te Mahi

• Jo Sanders

• Sebastian Blair