Week Five

Last week was our last week with the ISO teams. We spent Monday and Tuesday at the Pavilion and Museum, patrolling and in the control room, as well as going on a staircase hunt with Nick and Graham (we found it in the end, but it wasn’t as exciting as we’d all hoped).

On Wednesday we spent the day at Hove museum. When we arrived we were given glass cleaner and cloths and instructed to clean the cabinets! The ISO’s who work at Hove Museum, Preston Manor and the Booth Museum have a much more active job which involves looking after the building a lot more than the ISO’s at the Pavilion and Brighton Museum. After the cleaning, we got a chance to have a proper look around the museum displays before having a tour of the storage spaces and roof.
After having a very good jacket potato from the Tearoom for lunch, we spent the afternoon on the front desk, helping out with visitor queries and selling products in the shop.

Thursday was spent at Preston Manor, where we were greeted with the task of vacuuming the big centre staircase! At 10 o’clock, John arrived with Marcus and Jean from City College. We went through a LOT of paperwork and questions (we get NUS cards! Hurrah!), before we arranged to have our first proper meeting with Marcus, who will be our assessor for the duration of our apprenticeship, on Friday afternoon. It sounds like a very fun and interesting course!
During the afternoon, we were allowed to observe the school Role-Play activities. We followed the actors Greg and Pam (playing James the footman and Mrs Story the head housekeeper) around the building with the children who were visiting to learn about Victorian life and were pretending to be interviewed for servant positions. Greg was being very silly which, for me, meant I was forced to become a mute (which one of the boys from the school thought meant “short”. I wasn’t very pleased!) and Zak became Tomkins, which the children thought was a funny name!
We spent the rest of the afternoon tidying and locking up the building which involved going into the cellars which was interesting, but a bit too damp and spider-y for me to really enjoy!

We were at the Booth Museum on Friday. When we arrived, the ISO’s on duty made us very welcome and showed us how the shop worked. After this, we helped set up some tables and materials for a children’s art workshop that was happening in the morning. I thought that it was a really nice idea as the workshop was held in the insect part of the museum and many of the children left with models of spiders with glittery bodies and pipe cleaner legs, which showed that they were absorbing and being influenced by their surroundings, even if they were sparkled up a bit!! The afternoon was rather quiet so we spent quite a while helping Gerald move cases (which I didn’t look inside) upstairs to the storage area whilst asking him questions about everything we could think of and generally learning more about the museum and it’s contents.

I have really enjoyed being an ISO, but I am looking forward to doing something with a more active role. I am very pleased with the amount I’ve learnt in a month and how much of it I am able to remember!

Cassie