As you may have picked up from previous posts, Mr C and I are National Trust members and enjoy popping into their properties and gardens as we travel around the UK. It was therefore with great interest that I read Dav's post about his visit to his local NT property Beningborough Hall. One particular paragraph grabbed my attention:
"I was pleased to see the amount of visitors there, mostly fitting into the NT stereotypical demographics of families with young children and retired couples. I’m always happy to not conform."
What true words Dav speaks! As much as we enjoy NT visits I have to admit that without kids and being only 30 we are often a bit different to the other people there. The National Trust themselves seem to be very aware of their visitor demographic and it's quite interesting to read about how they're trying to change it.
For the first time in quite a while I found the time recently to sit down with the Spring 2009 copy of the NT Magazine (a fantastic read actually – far better than I was expecting) and was intrigued to read about their recent London Voices project. The aim of this was simply to get families who had never been to a NT site to engage with their local one through a variety of workshops. With the project taking place in London the families involved came form all around the globe. Most of them knew of their local NT property but many felt intimidated by the historic building. This project aimed to remove these fears and get these members of the community involved, and for the people working at the property to get involved in the local community.
From what I read it sounds like this project has been a fantastic success. It was really warming to read about how much the children and their parents have become engaged with the project. One particular story really made me smile. One five year old got involved through her grandmother. They passed their local property on the bus as they went to school yet had never ventured inside before. The granddaughter now has such a sense of ownership and pride in the property that she recently asked other visitors what they were doing in her house!
The Mister and I have recently become NT members… we decided that as we are spending so much time wandering around the country to see each other it would give us interesting things to do at the weekend 🙂
That’s one of the things that Mr C and I like so much about being members – whenever we go anywhere in the UK there’s always one somewhere en-route so that we can break the journey there and actually spend some time looking at the places we pass through!