Stories are a really important way for children (and all of us, for that matter) to escape to somewhere exciting, funny or moving. When we read, it transports us right into the heart of a story and makes us feel like it’s somehow just ours. Not all children are fortunate enough to have safe spaces in their lives and stories can take us to a different world that we feel in control of and that makes sense, and they’re an important way of developing empathy.
Midnight at the Museum was a hybrid online and postal project for children. We learned that they weren’t particularly interested in engaging digitally, but they loved reading the stories, doing the activities we included each time and writing back. There’s something really special about getting a letter through the post that’s got your name on it (as a child anyway; not so much as an adult), looking forward to it arriving each week and going to a post box with your reply.
Every letter the children got through the post told a story about an object in Hastings Museum that had cultural and emotional truth, but was a piece of creative writing – it’s rare we ask children to properly engage their imagination in museum projects. Each letter invited them to write back to the Pelican – we’ve had about 70 letters back so far and still counting. And who wouldn’t like to get replies like these through the post? They all made my day. This is also the best spelling of recycling I’ve ever seen.
‘Hard to reach’ audiences aren’t hard to reach if you make the effort to go to them. Hastings Museum are doing great things with digital outreach and I always look forward to seeing what they’re going to come up with next.
We were really lucky to have the generous support of Arts Council National Lottery Project Funding to enable us to create these stories, and the talents of Marli Weare and Holly Pearce to bring them to life. All the stories, activities and animations are on our website for anyone to download and we’re hoping to do round two of the digital subscription next year.
