What We Did On October 27, 2010

Our group meeting started out with a thirty minute telephone meeting at 11 am with Suzanne McFarlane, Communications Coordinator for the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority and Stephanie’s supervisor.  We told her of our plans to create a blog on Blogger.com, which would chronicle how our exhibit would come together using videos and photos.  Our group had also planned to update the R. Tait McKenzie entry on Wikipedia with more Canadian content – we would use the information from our curatorial paper and add a link to our blog on Wikipedia.  Another idea we related to Suzanne was about creating a Facebook page for our exhibit and the Mill of Kintail in general, which would include information on the museum, our exhibit and R. Tait McKenzie.  The pamphlets would direct people to this site, and the site would direct visitors to the Wikipedia article and the blog.  During the telephone meeting, Suzanne said we would have to get either her or Stephanie’s approval before we posted any text, videos or photos on either the Wiki, blog or Facebook page.  Theola also found out during the telephone meeting that we did not need to make a replica of the Joy of Effort medallion, as the Mill sells them in the gift shop.

Sample of the Joy of Effort medallion on sale in the gift shop.

For about an hour and a half after the phone call, we did a number of little things.  Kyle made a Gmail account for our blog and Facebook page, so we did not need to have access to the museum’s email.  We all did some pricing for the banners, pamphlets and bookmarks.  We also decided how we would go about testing the clay recipe for the interpretive craft the following week.  We decided that each of us would take a clay recipe and bring in the results, taking notes on how much it cost us to make, how much time it took to make and dry, how easy the recipe was to follow, and how many medallions they would make.

Our group then spent the next two and a half hours trying to fill out the exhibit worksheets.  Most of the fields in the worksheets did not pertain to our exhibit because it is not a traditional exhibit.  An outreach exhibit is more about advertising and enticing people to visit the museum.

During the next week, Stephanie emailed us to tell us not to make the pamphlets.  Apparently, the Naismith and McKenzie museums will merge soon and the pamphlets will be changing in January to reflect that.  So, our group decided we would concentrate on making just bookmarks.  One side of the bookmark would display trivia on one of the four roles McKenzie played in his life, and the back side would have information on how to make the craft – a clay medallion decorated to show what gives the maker joy.  We needed something to cut from the budget anyway, so the decision to scrap the pamphlets actually worked out.