Page 81 - Hrobat Virloget, Katja, et al., eds. (2015). Stone narratives: heritage, mobility, performance. University of Primorska Press, Koper.
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public presentation of stone monuments
A key mechanism through which good interpretation can engage the visitor is by
challenging them, encouraging and enabling them to reflect on what is being presented to
them rather than simply observing:
»The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.« (Tilden, 1977, p. 9)
In this article the word interpretation is used in Tilden’s sense. To put Tilden’s ap-
proach to interpretation more simply, people are interested in people. To engage people
with whatever it is we are presenting or interpreting we must find themes and techniques
through which people can relate to the subject we wish them to find out about; we need to
enable people to see the people in the stone.
Steve Van Matre is an environmental activist and educator whose approaches focus
on practical and experiential learning in the outdoors and which include a holistic aspect
that connects the participant with the subject. The educational techniques he advocates
can be highly effective in engaging children and adults with the world around them and
reflecting on their impacts and relationships. He founded the concept of Earth Education
and has published a number of books about this, most notably Sunship Earth (1979) and
Earth Education: A New beginning (1990).
With a dynamic, innovative and dedicated team of countryside rangers, we had great
fun and much success in applying the principles of Tilden and Van Matre to interpreting
the natural and cultural landscape of Shipley Country Park. Possibly our most successful
project was an annual programme of interpretation activity focused on local children from
former coal mining communities through which we sought to inspire their interest and un-
derstanding of the world around them. Each year this involved around 100 children and
lots of volunteer helpers. One year following a simulated plane crash (the main marquee
transformed into the cabin of a jumbo jet) the children found they had landed in the midst
of an equatorial rainforest (an imaginatively transformed Country Park!) through which
they were guided to safety by rainforest people, who passed on their local knowledge on the
way. Another year the childrens’ time machine landed in the midst of a 19th century indus-
trial landscape…..and so on!
I later moved on to become the first Director of the Creswell Heritage Trust, responsi-
ble for the management and public presentation of the UK’s most important publicly man-
aged archaeological and geological site for the Ice Age, at Creswell Crags near Worksop on
the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border (http://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/ ). One of the
UK’s largest scheduled monuments and a Geological Site of Special Interest, the site has in
the past been proposed as a World Heritage Site because of its significance for understand-
ing human life on the margins of the ice sheets during the last glaciation.
The site is a gorge carved by glacial meltwater in magnesian limestone rock, honey-
combed with caves that have produced evidence of people, animals and environment be-
tween 45,000 and 10,000 years ago. Most recently, in 2004, the UK’s most significant Ice
Age cave art was discovered here by a team of Spanish and British archaeologists, compris-
ing engravings of animals and birds including bison, deer and ibis in the roof of Church
Hole cave (Bahn and Pettit, 2009).
Despite being featured as a major regional tourist attraction in the nineteenth centu-
ry, the gorge at Creswell Crags had suffered from neglect over the years with a road built
through it for transport of coal from neighbouring collieries and a sewage works construct-
79
A key mechanism through which good interpretation can engage the visitor is by
challenging them, encouraging and enabling them to reflect on what is being presented to
them rather than simply observing:
»The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.« (Tilden, 1977, p. 9)
In this article the word interpretation is used in Tilden’s sense. To put Tilden’s ap-
proach to interpretation more simply, people are interested in people. To engage people
with whatever it is we are presenting or interpreting we must find themes and techniques
through which people can relate to the subject we wish them to find out about; we need to
enable people to see the people in the stone.
Steve Van Matre is an environmental activist and educator whose approaches focus
on practical and experiential learning in the outdoors and which include a holistic aspect
that connects the participant with the subject. The educational techniques he advocates
can be highly effective in engaging children and adults with the world around them and
reflecting on their impacts and relationships. He founded the concept of Earth Education
and has published a number of books about this, most notably Sunship Earth (1979) and
Earth Education: A New beginning (1990).
With a dynamic, innovative and dedicated team of countryside rangers, we had great
fun and much success in applying the principles of Tilden and Van Matre to interpreting
the natural and cultural landscape of Shipley Country Park. Possibly our most successful
project was an annual programme of interpretation activity focused on local children from
former coal mining communities through which we sought to inspire their interest and un-
derstanding of the world around them. Each year this involved around 100 children and
lots of volunteer helpers. One year following a simulated plane crash (the main marquee
transformed into the cabin of a jumbo jet) the children found they had landed in the midst
of an equatorial rainforest (an imaginatively transformed Country Park!) through which
they were guided to safety by rainforest people, who passed on their local knowledge on the
way. Another year the childrens’ time machine landed in the midst of a 19th century indus-
trial landscape…..and so on!
I later moved on to become the first Director of the Creswell Heritage Trust, responsi-
ble for the management and public presentation of the UK’s most important publicly man-
aged archaeological and geological site for the Ice Age, at Creswell Crags near Worksop on
the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border (http://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/ ). One of the
UK’s largest scheduled monuments and a Geological Site of Special Interest, the site has in
the past been proposed as a World Heritage Site because of its significance for understand-
ing human life on the margins of the ice sheets during the last glaciation.
The site is a gorge carved by glacial meltwater in magnesian limestone rock, honey-
combed with caves that have produced evidence of people, animals and environment be-
tween 45,000 and 10,000 years ago. Most recently, in 2004, the UK’s most significant Ice
Age cave art was discovered here by a team of Spanish and British archaeologists, compris-
ing engravings of animals and birds including bison, deer and ibis in the roof of Church
Hole cave (Bahn and Pettit, 2009).
Despite being featured as a major regional tourist attraction in the nineteenth centu-
ry, the gorge at Creswell Crags had suffered from neglect over the years with a road built
through it for transport of coal from neighbouring collieries and a sewage works construct-
79
