Blog

If you are taking part in the Story:Web co-design workshops, thank you! (If not, you can find out how to take part here ). We’ll be sharing our progress here on the ‘blog. This post explains what we’ll be doing in the first workshop and gives you some simple tasks to do before it.

Before We Begin

Once you know more about the project, you need to formally agree to take part.

1. Please read through the Information for Participants document , which tells you about our research. You can email any questions about it to me (simon.bowen@newcastle.ac.uk ) and ask questions about it at the start of the first workshop.
2. If you’ve had all your questions answered and are happy to continue we’ll ask you to complete a Consent Form at the first workshop. You can do this sooner if you don’t have any questions.

About Workshop 1

Our first workshop is part of the ‘discovery phase’ of co-design, where together we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities for making sense of environmental issues online and in museums.

During the workshop we’ll:

1. Discuss how you engage with environmental issues like biodiversity loss, climate change, food security and energy sustainability;
2. Discuss what you already do online and on social media;
3. Give you an idea of how big the museum’s collection is, and how it relates to environmental issues;
4. Show examples of how museum objects, images, and sounds might combine to tell stories.

Tasks Before Workshop 1

There a few things you can do before workshop 1 that will help us make the most out of it.

Questionnaire

Please fill in a short online questionnaire about you, your current online habits, and your expectations for the project. (Please do this even if you have already provided some of this information.)

Environmental Issue

Find an example of something you have seen online about an environmental issue you are interested in or concerned about. Copy a link to it and/or take a screen shot of it and write one or two sentences explaining why you chose it – what is interesting or concerning about it? We’ll then challenge Dan Gordon, one of the Museum’s curators, to find museum objects relating to these issues that we’ll show in the first workshop.

You can do this by yourself or with others in your school or college group. Please email your issue(s) and sentences to me (simon.bowen@newcastle.ac.uk ) by Tuesday 18th January.

If you need some inspiration, The Great North Museum: Hancock has produced some videos about environmental change:

• Life and Lessons on Planet Earth
• Energy and Emmissions
• Extinction
• Introduced and Invasive Species
• Sea Level Rise

Online Inspiration

Find an example of something you have seen online (including on social media) that has either made you think differently about something or understand something better. This doesn’t have to be an environmental issue. Take a screenshot or copy a link to it. You can find one example by yourself or come up with a few examples with others in your school or college group. We’ll share and discuss these at the first workshop.

Just for Fun

If you have time, you can:

• Take ‘virtual tours’ of some of the Great North Museum: Hancock’s collections stores - The Biology Store and The Ethnography Store ;
• Watch Dan Gordon , the Museum’s Keeper of Biology, talk about some of his favourite collection objects.

If you have any questions, please get in touch (simon.bowen@newcastle.ac.uk ).

We’re looking forward to working with you!

Simon and the Story:Web team