Wales's biggest celebration of architecture and heritage — free Dathliad pensaernïaeth a threftadaeth fwyaf Cymru — am ddim

INTERPRETATION AND EDUCATION

Participation in Open Doors means that all events should incorporate a way of interpreting the building or site to visitors. After all, you want other people, whether members of your community or others to appreciate and take pride in a place you love. Interpretation does not mean a significant cost outlay. At a simple level, interpretation can be offered through a guide, a leaflet, an exhibition, or a display board.. Simple and cheap is often best, and will be the only reasonable option for many organisers. Some, however, will want to try something more sophisticated, and may incorporate ancillary activities that contribute to visitor understanding and enjoyment. ALL MATERIAL SHOULD CARRY THE OPEN DOORS LOGO SO THAT IT IS INSTANTLY RECOGNISABLE AS BEING PART OF THE EUROPEAN HERITAGE DAYS PROGRAMME IN WALES.

Whatever strategy you choose, bear in mind the points that follow.

Simple and fun
The objective of interpretation is to communicate to the visitor the significance of a place or an object so that through understanding it better s/he can appreciate more readily their heritage and environment, and be encouraged to take a positive attitude to conservation. Use language that everyone understands, including children. Try to provoke interest rather than be didactic. Simple and fun is better than detailed and boring.
  Try to tailor what you offer to the kind of visitor you are likely to get and to their probable expectations. Will people who live locally have different interests to those who have come from a distance?
  Teachers know that people learn best through active experience. They remember what they hear and read less well than what they see and do and discover for themselves. Asking people questions may be more stimulating than simply telling them something! And be ready to respond to your visitors' questions — local history and architectural heritage captivate a wide but often uninformed audience.

Engaging children and families
There are some specific opportunities to interest children and young people as well as adults. You may be lucky enough to promote a European aspect to your event. If you have a twin town, for instance, find out what's going on there! You might be able to swap publicity material, photographic exhibitions, even exploit internet or web cam links. If you are involving local schools in Open Doors events, this kind of activity might be especially rewarding; they may well have well-established links that you could exploit.
   You might want to introduce your visitors to particular themes or points of interest and focus your information and activities on these, for example

• architectural history, style, detail, language
• function and form
• use of materials
• fixtures and decoration
• family history
• important events
• local historical documents
• comparisons with other local buildings or sites
• conservation and preservation
• risks to the heritage
• the relationship between your site and its context, for instance the local history and geography of your community, landscape and economy, social history and building history.

If you anticipate or are encouraging a significant number of younger visitors, you could get them actively involved in interpreting your site by organising a photographic, modelling, sketching or essay-writing competition. Children can find out a lot by analysing a building, its details, materials and spaces graphically. This would also be a good way to create a publicity opportunity for your event.

Ideas for you
Based on these insights here are some specific suggestions to supplement the obvious such as leaflets, and displays.
Audio guides : are relatively simple to prepare using mp3 players and a simple recording facility.
Computer-based displays : there is a use for Powerpoint© beyond the sales report! This software can be used to provide a simple repeating display on a laptop or desktop. It can be used creatively as the basis of an interactive activity. Presentations can be published to CD/DVD and given/sold to visitors. You can also burn collections of photographs and guides to disk.
Tactile opportunities: Hands-on activities which involve holding, feeling, describing – even tasting – objects can really engage kids and grown-ups. Period food can be fun (and nutritious). Puzzles and quizzes can be built around objects. Link such ideas to drawing and modelling.
Quizzes and puzzles: based on an exploration of your site can be linked to worksheets which invite visitors of all ages to observe and think about what they see. Children especially can be stimulated through opportunities to describe and compare, draw, photograph and make notes.
Storytelling is especially fun for younger children. They also enjoy face-painting. Think about providing activity tables with pens, paints, paper, plasticine, etc.

Open Doors and the school curriculum
Teachers, especially primary teachers, may be able to make use of your event to contribute to the curriculum in their schools. A visit to a historic or even a modern building offers plenty of opportunity both for subject specific and cross-curricular work. We offer a few ideas here which should help you if you are setting out to involve schools formally in your event.
  Remember, though, that Open Doors days come at the very start of the school year. Teachers are often just getting to know their classes. Moreover, you will need to open your site on a weekday if you aim to attract school visits. But your event can be a trigger for a relationship with a local school or schools that develops over the year, in which your site becomes a fully thought through curriculum resource. Here are some very basic thoughts about the relevance of sites old and new to learning. Remember, too, that in Wales there is the very specific opportunity for a teacher to make use of a site in the context of the Curriculum Cymreig, which can help pupils to:
•  understand and celebrate the distinctive quality of living and learning in Wales in the twenty-first century
•  identify their own sense of Welshness
•  feel a heightened sense of belonging to their local community and country.
  It can also help to foster in pupils an understanding of an outward-looking and international Wales
  English is about communication, orally, through writing, and through building listening skills. A teacher may want to involve a class in group discussion about what they have seen, in writing activities, such as short stories or descriptive work. They may want to introduce students to new vocabulary, to organise research exercises, or stimulate children to make oral presentations about their visit and what they have seen and found out.
  Buildings give lots of opportunities, too, to build and develop number and geometry skills . They can be measured and planned; they contain interesting shapes and forms; individual features can be counted and drawn; the volume and area of different spaces can be studied and compared, and related to past and present use.
  Scientific understanding can be developed through observing and learning about properties of materials, natural and man-made, or by thinking about a building's relationship to and impact on its environment, and the needs of the people who use it. Comparing several buildings in this way can be especially interesting. Engineering aspects, such as the way a building works in terms of its structural elements, and the forces of tension and compression that are at work within the structure could also be relevant.
  If a teacher wants to focus on geography or history, any building offers a great deal of potential. A visit to a building can be exploited through map work, and recording through drawing and photography. Building location, siting, form, function and use (past and present) can be studied and related to the social patterns and history of the locality. Types of building can be compared locally, or by getting children to think about how buildings of the same type may differ from one country to another. Why would particular types of materials have been chosen by its builders? Where would they have come from? What factors would have influenced these choices? How and why have buildings changed?   What can be found out, through the study of documents or visual sources, about a building over the years?
  Teachers could involve children in making comparisons between old and new buildings. They have opportunities, too, to introduce children to elements of architectural history, style and detail. This is a rich resource through which to address curriculum orders for art and design, through sketching, photography, modelling and other media; studying craft traditions and techniques; or analysing issues such as space, form and context.
Needless to say, investigating a building is a fantastic opportunity for a cross-curricular project.

Resources

EnglandThe Civic Trust has produced a useful Teacher's pack who wish to build visits to Heritage Days sites into their schemes of work. There is a useful and imaginative section on how a school itself can become an exhibition and performance space for a Heritage Days event and thereby reach out to its community. The England Organiser's guide is also useful. Both these documents can be downloaded as Adobe Acrobat © document. Visit the Heritage Open Days section at www.civictrust.org.uk.
London Open House publishes two useful packs to support the use of architecture as a learning resource for schools, one focusing on KS2 art, design and technology and another on design at KS3. Ordering information online at www.openhouselondon.org.
Engaging places is a report published in 2002 by the Architecture Centre Network and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment that looks at architecture and the built environment as a curriculum opportunity. Download as an Acrobat file from www.architecturecentre.net/resources.asp . Further resources and ideas may be found by visiting the sites that are members of this network.