This sandpit is made to be portable out of four planks of wood we repurposed, they slot together so the whole thing sort of flat packs for transport. The idea is that with the help of tarpolnies and play sand and hard hats and sieves and trowels and so on this can be an archaeology dig or a fossil pit!
Other things it can be used for workshop wise are: Gem stone extraction, volcanoes, impact creators and of course general play.
It is having its first outing at the Gloucester Cathedral Archaeology Festival.
The Folk Museum (rebranded to the Life Museum) is Mary's favourite museum - it is a great local treasure full of local history and fun activities for the kids, behind the scenes there is a lot of curation and looking after the collections. The building itself is a beautiful wooden beamed structure that is hundreds of years old - sadly this also means it is expensive to maintain.
And so what with cuts and austerity and a struggling council the heartbreaking news that they were going to close the museum was not so much a shock but an expected blow. The museums do relatively cheap activities for the kids and the staff are lovely but the news had already reached me that the staff had been slashed in number over all three council run buildings (two museums and the Guildhall).
This is the museum where Mary left her money baby in the wendy house and the staff went out of their way to return it too us.
So obviously I'm not the only person who feels ill at ease with loosing this local resource and historical gem and a petition was soon up and running - you can sign it here. Since it was started up the Civic Trust have said they will take it on but if that is the case then it is doubtful that they can afford a curator so there would be no one to manage and maintain the collection. Curation is not just about labelling things and putting them in shelf displays - it is also about making sure things are kept in ways that do not damage them - with out a curator then the potential damage is pretty high (mind due the roof leaks so if that is not fixed then the damage will be damn high too).
Added to all this is the fact that historic buildings that are not wanted by the right people tend to go up in flames around here - recently there was three fires in one night - all targeting local old pubs with development issues.
Jokingly me and my friend suggested we might need to make a human shield around the museum - we were only half joking :/ I wish I was rich because I would buy it and fix it and pay the staff and make it free access and have a mini hackspace and little science/education bit in the new building out the back in garden. I'd hold talks in the cafe and stuff like that.
This is the poll I posted to twitter - and here are the options of the slightly more in depth one that I posted to Facebook:
The Beginning/Deep Time
Present Day
Space/Interstellar
The Beginning of Human History
Upload/VR/Singularity
Post Apocalyptic Near Future
Pretty much I've had equal votes for everything plus some pointers on what individuals like ie no excessive flash backs/forwards and no huge storyline dumps etc...
The plan is that in 2019 I will begin rolling out the edited finished versions of stuff in The Punk's Universe for the reader... but I don't know where to begin the story for the reader. There is a hell of a lot of stuff written which I am currently editing and finishing and re-writing and in some cases still desperately researching.
2019 will mark the 10 year anniversary of me starting my first NaNoWriMo - a month long writing challenge. I have taken part in all the writing challenges I possible could since and most of those have been set in the same universe. Initially I thought it was a sci-fi version of the scififantasy story I'd been writing and world building since I was 13. Then I realised that no - it was in fact the same universe and the "magic" was all just the nanotech and the like. It was a pretty strong contender for scifi to begin with because I fail at sustained fantasy worlds ie I can manage maybe a short story and then scifi will start creeping in.
Anyway the issue is that there are 100, 000's of words written and about a 1000 pages of comic book scripted in the universe and only a few short stories of it are out there and this needs to be rectified!
Seriously I have now been writing this for what 2/3rds of my life?
So yeah - ideas, feedback etc... would be useful 🙂
Ta much!
This weekend on Sat 22nd of July I'll be at Gloucester Cathedrals Festival of Archaeology event with my workshop Awesome Archaeology and Fantastic Fossils. There will be a sand pit with sieves and tools to find things, panning for "gold", a little lab set up to sort out and label your finds, clay impressions, sediment bottles, stratigraphic logs, metal detecting, papier mache fossils, little ruins to piece together and colouring in sheets plus some actual rocks! 🙂
Here is a sneak peak at the sandpit we've made 🙂
And this is all just me! There are lots of other things going on for adults as well as kids 🙂 I'll be in the Cloisters Garden 🙂
My workshop shows the basic methods for finding and sorting specimens/finds as well as going over some basic geological processes!
Oh yeah and of course there will be the Cuddly Science puppets!
Can you tell I'm excited?
This is the undigitised version of one of the colouring sheets as is the picture at the top that I have been working on. Created by making studies of actual fossils and archaeological ruins!
This is tonight - me and a host of other poets who happen to have a connection to Gloucester will be performing at St Mary's DeCrypt in Gloucester. The building is ancient and being restored - I'm really looking forward to seeing inside it actually 🙂
It is being compered by the wonderful poet and comedian Angie Blecher. It's gearing up to be a cracking night of poetics and fun 🙂
Aethelflaed and All things Anglo-Saxon, Archeology, Art and Craft, Geology | sarah | 
Tue 25th Jul 2017 3:33 pm | 
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