Student, Amy, writes about her experience starting her 6-month placement at the Crannog Centre.
Read about our Valentine’s day event and Amy’s experience!
Valentines Day 2022 saw the reopening of the Scottish Crannog Centre- and the beginning of my 6 month work placement there. I have recently completed my masters degree in Museum and Artefact Studies from Durham University. I was already familiar with Kenmore and the Crannog Centre, owing to many family holidays to the area. Our last holiday to Kenmore followed the completion of my masters dissertation. After enquiring about a music event happening that night, I mentioned that I was looking for work experience and the Crannog team were happy to take me on.
The whole team are so enthusiastic and passionate and were eager to get me involved as soon as possible. I was able to shadow the first couple of tours, watching how the Crannog team delivered their talks, retaining this information in order to deliver one of the talks myself one day. The whole team is so knowledgeable and passionate about the Crannog that I soon began to feel the same way. Despite the lack of Crannog, the team is still able to deliver a fulfilling visitor experience. During my time with the Crannog team, they are preparing for the move to Dalerb, creating a new site directly across the water, featuring the building of several new Crannogs and a roundhouse. I am excited to see what they achieve over at their new site!
I was thrown right in the deep end! By my second day I was delivering the pottery talk and activity to tour groups coming in. Sharing my knowledge about the pottery collections whilst teaching visitors how to make their very own Iron Age pot allowed visitors to experience first hand some of the technology that would have been used on the Crannog site 2500 years ago. This was an amazing opportunity as pottery is one of my main interests. Being able to interact with tour groups was an extremely rewarding experience. The Crannog specialise in immersive history, allowing visitors to really surround themselves with the past. Becoming an integral part of a visitor’s learning experience is such an important part of any museum trip and will benefit me moving forward in my museum career.
I am very much looking forward to the next six months, in particular I am excited to assist with the upcoming Pottery project the museum is undertaking. I believe becoming involved in the Crannog community is going to be a very rewarding experience and a valuable first step in my museum career.
