Coast at Greenwich: Boatmaking

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My name is Rachel Hall and I work here at the National Maritime Museum and I'm an environmental education officer. So what I do is I develop and deliver educational programmes for school children, mostly aged between eleven and sixteen, on the subject of the marine environment; why it’s important, why we need to look after it, how we’re all linked to the sea in our every day lives.

And we’re lucky that that programme’s fully funded, which is fantastic, by the Crown Estates, and so through that funding we’re able to put on regular study days and develop lots of resources for teachers and students to enjoy.

And what is it that you're doing here today?

Today, we are hosting the BBC Coast Roadshow, which is obviously contributed by the Open University, and I believe they are funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to be here today. And we've got lots of workshops going on today.

We have got a boatbuilding workshop going on here, and we've got all ages coming in here to use craft materials to build boats, and they're testing them out, I can see, in some tubs of water over there, to make sure that they float and that they're working very well, and using balloons and all sorts of things to propel their boats along.

They're decorating them as well with lots of craft materials and pens, and so on.

What is it that you hope that the participants today will be taking away with them?

I really hope that they go away feeling inspired about coasts and about the marine environment. It’s such an important environment, and I think we’re all connected to it in so many different ways, and I just hope that through the workshops, the activities they take part in today, they go away feeling inspired to do something a little bit extra to look after this really important environment and to appreciate it a little bit more.

And I hope as well they get inspired about doing craft activities, we've got lots of craft activities here today as well. There's a fashion workshop where the children, and adults as well, can use old bits of material, and some junk as well, to make fashion accessories and items of clothing.

So obviously we've got the boatbuilding and a windmill workshop as well, so, you know, just to have been inspired in lots of different ways.

And in here at the moment we've got anything from a very small child, two years old, right the way up to grown ups and everyone else joining in, is that part of the fun of it?

Absolutely, definitely, and it’s really important to us here, as a museum, that we attract everybody, that we’re all inclusive and that everybody can come here and have a good time, so it’s fantastic for us to see that we have got, as you said, some very young children from two years old, right all the way up to adults, and, as you can see, they're all having a really nice time. So, again that’s really important for us to make sure that anybody can come here and have a really great time.