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Stepping into a Story
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Cross-curricular enquiry: We stepped into a story and imagined that we had been contacted by English Heritage, as they needed a team of experts to come up with ideas for how we could encourage larger visitor numbers to the historical site Grimes Graves. We first analysed data on visitor numbers. We also looked at real reviews from Trip Advisor. We got ourselves into teams and collaborated to thought-shower and record our initial ideas. Some of the ideas were:
• Improving the toilet facilities as there are only 2 port-a-loos on site and no baby changing facilities.
• Better indoor facilities so that the mainly outdoor site can be visited even in bad weather. This could include a museum/gallery showing what life was like in The Stone Age. Some of us feel that there could be ‘hands on activities’ and interactive displays.
• Hold special events every few months to encourage visitors to return.
• Consider improving the access for people with disabilities and pushchairs.
• Increasing car park facilities.
Later we realised that some of our ideas, whilst improving things for human visitors, they might have an impact on the environment, especially the wildlife habitats in the surrounding area. This creates an ethical dilemma… Another dilemma was how to make the site accessible for all whilst preserving the significant historical site.
We also discussed that some of our ideas would require a lot of investment from English Heritage. We would need to ensure that the investment was not greater than the return. So we need to prioritise…each group had to negotiate their top 3 ideas. We learnt it is not necessarily about getting our individual ideas in the top 3, but looking at the pros and cons of each idea…which would bring the most return for the investment and improve the visitor experience. We needed to make sure that everybody had a chance to share their opinion and we might need to compromise.