Tricia shares her experience as learning volunteer at the Fulham Palace Spring fair family fun day in April, where she helped organise and deliver fun educational activities, with a herbal twist!
Herbs of Fulham Palace
Over the Easter holidays, Fulham Palace welcomed museums from around West London to participate in a vibrant family fun day – the Spring Fair. Staff and volunteers from the Palace had various activities running in the great hall, such as sewing, weaving and examples of headwear through the ages, medallion making, decorating herbal pebbles and on display, a wonderful array of items that could be purchased from the shop. This free event was made possible by funding from The John Lyons Charity.
It was my job to facilitate the herbal pebble decorating, mainly with children but also with six, gamely adults! The activity was very popular and there was often a queue of children waiting to join in.
Herbal pebble examples of: Rosehips, Viola, Bergamot, Lugwort and Lavender
You, too, can decorate your head with Bay, Lavender, Rosemary and Marjoram in your hair!
Volunteer Tricia looked the part for the event.
Tacca chantrieri - Black Bat Plant
Whilst most children took part in the herbal theme, some went off-piste and wanted to draw a bat, a dragon and a cat. This required some thinking on the spot to bring us back to the plant theme. With the young person who drew a bat, I chatted about what bats eat on the wing and how all those insects they eat have had the chance to pollinate the herbs in the garden and how important it is to have insects in the world, after all, we are all cogs in the big world that is nature. We also talked about there being a plant, whose common name is Bat plant.
Moldavian Dragonhead - Dracocephalum moldavica
The young person who drew her family pet, a black cat, we talked about the herb, cat mint/ cat nip and how much felines love to play with cat nip bags and balls. With the young person who drew the dragon on the pebble, we talked about some types of New Zealand flax that has a common name of “dragon”, due to the wonderful colouring of the spiked leaves; we also talked about how flax can be made into string and rope. There is also a herb Moldovian Dragonhead, which is a form of mint.
However, there was one young person who had just returned from Venice and he drew The Bridge of Sighs. He so wanted to talk about his holiday and having the same enthusiasm for the place, we had quite a long chat. Eventually we talked about the herbs that can be put on pizza, so in a round about way, we got back to the day’s theme!
Volunteering with the learning team is a very interesting and a most rewarding post and I would encourage anyone, who is interested in this role, to give it a go. My role is mainly sitting down supervisory, information giving and a chatting one. When I attend events, which is about once or twice a year, I prepare information sheets and a quiz for adults but this is not essential to the volunteer role at all and just something I find fun to do at home. The chance for some children to engage with an adult outside their own sphere, can be informative, interesting and I never fail to learn something from the participants every time I attend and I hope they learn something from me, too. I can really recommend this role as great fun.
I would be very pleased to talk to anyone who is interested in becoming a learning volunteer but whom has concerns before putting his/her/their name forward. You can also reach out to the learning team for more information at learning@fulhampalace.org.
Tricia Kern, learning volunteer
A young visitor hard at work creating a decorated pebble at the Spring Fair.