Thanks from Granny Sandie!

by Sandie Robb, Senior Education Officer - Discovery & Learning, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland

When Naomi first contacted me to work with her on a Scratch Pantomime with children in Edinburgh, I was very excited by the idea but I must admit I didn't quite know what it would involve or how successful it would be. I also didn't know I would end up as Granny, so keeping in character here are a few words from Granny Sandie:

"Well me dearies, it still amazes me that after only a few hours the children performed from scratch such a good show. At the start all I wanted was a bit of piece and quiet, a little afternoon nap on my chair with my blanket keeping me nice and warm but I was awoken by 13 excitable children! And very glad I was too as it was a delight to join them on stage." 

The following Friday the children visited Edinburgh Zoo. The afternoon started with a handling session featuring some of our smaller animals including an African royal python. The children learnt about vertebrates and invertebrates and about body coverings from fur, feathers, to skin and scales. Then a visit to two of our most popular animals Tian Tian and Yang Guang, the giant pandas, including learning about the importance of breeding programmes. We also visited our Budongo Trail, the chimpanzee enclosure and then up to the big cats with many other animals on route.

Back in our Education Centre, it was wonderful to hear how much information about endangered animals, the story of the Mauritius kestrel and their experiences of the panto that the children had retained from the previous week.

It was a delight to work with these children and despite the fact that in normal circumstances I would prefer to be considered younger than my years, I am actually proud to be remembered by them as Granny Sandie!

I have to thank all those involved and especially Naomi - a great idea and a great medium to deliver our message. I also hope to repeat the project with other youth groups.

What an exciting week!

by Naomi Webster, Education and Interpretation Officer, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

and Genomics Forum Bright Ideas Fellow

I knew that I had set myself a challenge in trying to put together a scratch pantomime with a conservation message and our preliminary discussions with LYT- Discover and North Edinburgh Arts highlighted complications I hadn’t considered such potentially low literacy rates. So I rapidly threw my draft script out of the window and realised that the children’s parts would definitely need to be improvised during the rehearsals but we might be able to use an adult narrator to keep the story on track – in case their creativity headed off somewhere unexpected! 

Friday lunchtime rapidly approached and we headed out to North Edinburgh Arts Centre to see how many children would be taking part. Having had my expectations set rather low, we were thrilled when 13 children turned up – the lure of a trip to Edinburgh Zoo having proved a great incentive! And it was a great excuse to work with Sandie – Senior Education Officer at RZSS – and a not-so-secret panto enthusiast like me!

Having kicked off with some evaluation to get an idea of the children’s baseline knowledge, Sandie and I were excited to discover that the children’s knowledge was actually higher than we expected. A recent school project on rainforests and regular viewing of Deadly 60 being two sources they mentioned! Despite this prior knowledge, the children quickly got into the swing of the games, learning all about the layers of the forest, physically illustrating Gerald Durrell’s cobweb quote “The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider’s web. If you touch one thread, you send shudders through all the rest. People are not just touching the web, we are ripping great big holes in it.”