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zzzz

Can you hear snoring?

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Interpretation of geoheritage and natural heritage?

There is NO right or wrong way to interpret geoheritage …or any other sort of heritage….but some ways work better than others!

So here are some ideas I find useful….

by John Macadam, geologist and interpreter

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Questions I ask myself:�

Why?
Who?
What?
How?
Where?

[Are you still awake?]

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Why?

Why do you want to interpret this geoheritage?

To educate visitors?

To protect the geoheritage …and the visitors?

Or to show how clever you are by using long words?

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Who?

Who is your target audience?

‘Normal’ people?
Families?
Local people?
Visitors?
Foreign visitors?
Geologists?
…..or maybe both normal people and geologists! Visitors and locals!

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What?�

What do they want to know? Talk to them! Lead a guided walk – they will ask questions! Ask them.

But I suggest they will want to know HOW we know a rock is 80 million years old NOT whether it is 80.4 or 80.2 million years old.

And we should try to explain processes, not just name products.

And they will certainly only want to know a tiny fraction of what geological experts know!

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What?�

What do they know?

Biennial surveys by US National Science Foundation and comparisons with Japan, China, EU and Russia, etc….(NSF 2018, Tables 7-9, www.nsf.gov)

“Does the Earth go round the Sun, or the Sun go round the Earth?”

In 2016 73% of the US sample got the accepted answer.

“Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.”

Agreed: USA 52%, Russia 44%, Japan 78% (highest).

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What?

What do you want to tell them? Remember that most of your visitors have not come for a school lesson!

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How?

Boards/panels
App
Leaflet
Guided trail
AR
VR
Time lines
Rock gardens…….

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Where?

…….. So you are now planning where you will have trails, info points, visitor centres, …. etc

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I work as an interpreter. Often I am interpreting geoheritage but also incorporating human stories ….��What is ‘interpretation’?

Information, yes, but also connection to what is interpreted.

So both head and heart. AND, I think, hand (to change what people do after seeing the interpretation).

Lots of definitions!

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Interpretation helps visitors to:

Find out things for themselves
Use all their senses
See real objects, not reproductions or digital
Be involved (so interpretation is interactive)

________________________________________

So where do we aim to have our visitors on the continuum below:

active visitor …<<……>>…couch potato (TV, TV, TV..)

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Normal people are

Visiting for leisure not education
AND probably not visiting our special sites
so we have to tell them about ‘geoheritage’ where they are – in museums, in urban parks, in towns and cities, in shopping malls….. And then invite them to visit our special sites.
AND we have to interpret some very unspecial sites – really simple geology! ..a simple fold, a simple fault – and then build up the complexity, maybe in a trail.
AND for sustainable development (e.g. in a geopark) we need lots of normal people, not just a few geologists.

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Father of interpretation, Freeman Tilden, of US National Park Service. 1957, Interpreting our Heritage):

Provoke
Relate
Reveal

So panels should say: “Look at me!”

And leaflets should say: “Pick me up!”

And interpretation should inform, and affect, and modify behaviour …

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Simple language (not jargon!)
Short sentences
Active not passive
Use action words (e.g. “Explore the geology of….”)
Interactive (invite people to find out for themselves, ask questions but always give the answers too, invite people to use different senses – e.g. stroke rocks to feel grain, glacial polish, a fault plane, etc)
Stories about people (Charles Darwin, William Smith, Joachim Barrande, …. miners….local culture)
Layer text with a simple take-home message (the ‘theme’) for non-readers (i.e. most people!)
Can you satisfy more than one target audience?

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So far in this talk: blah, blah, blah …words, words, words…

No images

BORING ……….. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Remember we are trying to communicate

So we need photos, artwork, diagrams (simple ones!), cartoons…

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Reconstructions? (for two audiences)

Artwork by Brin Edwards

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The next panel:

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Two audiences, again.

Planet Earth 3 billion years ago

(based on rocks at Barberton, South Africa.
(Artwork by Maggie Newman)

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There’s a long history of geological reconstructions:

“Duria Antiquor” – Ancient Dorset - by de la Beche, first director of the British Geological Survey.

..includes all the vertebrates found by Mary Anning.

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Two examples of “provoke”:

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Interactive – touch: stroking rocks

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Charles Darwin and his kids:

Creation, with Paul Bettany

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..interpretation can also be:

Art
Music
Food (biscuits, ice cream ..)
Some of these are mainly

for raising awareness,

some have more

focussed aims.

Arouca Geopark

Naturtejo

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Why not a cartoon, or two?

Why not?

Artist: Debbie Ryder for Earthwords

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Cleaned your teeth today? Of course!�

Put rocks in your mouth today? Don’t be silly!

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“Droplets and the stone”

The story of karst
Published by Croatian Natural History Museum in 4 languages (Croat, English, German and Italian).
Written by Damir Lacković

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http://speleologija.eu/kapljicaikamen/en-index.html

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Reading Age? (Word Processing packages will calculate this).
Get your text checked by the target audience (after it’s been checked by your experts and colleagues for errors and typos). Reward them (it’s an important job).

trail for families >

(English Riviera Geopark)

�

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A recent job was interpretation for a quarry with some little black smudges – fossils of the first land plants (Cooksonia):

…and thank plants for the oxygen we breathe

(Artwork by Debbie Ryder)

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Normal people

Ask the hotel receptionist, the tourist information centre assistant, …your mechanic.. Would they pick up your leaflet?

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Managing behaviour - conservation

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layered text with a simple ‘take-home message’:

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Evaluate!

Does your leaflet/panel/app/… work with the target audience(s)?

Does your planned (!) visitor centre work with the intended audience(s)?
Does your draft visitor centre work …..?
Did your actual visitor centre work……?

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I have been talking about:�� Making geology accessible to the public

Or I could have called it:

‘Dumbing down’, but maintaining scientific integrity.

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Warning! Advertisement!

Why not ask me to run a workshop for you….or work with you on interpreting your geological heritage and other heritages?

[Workshops, invited keynotes, work: Norwegian Geological Survey, Finnish Geological Survey, U Minho MSc, ‘Fragile Earth’ (GSA/DGG), Scottish Natural Heritage, Geopark Idrija, IAEG50, London U MSc, U Torino MSc, Morocco (Agadir U), etc, etc… but all pre-pandemic. But now I'm travelling again – many thanks! Off to Portugal to teach on PANGEA MSc next.]

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You want more?

Reynard & Brilha, 2017:

Geoheritage: blah blah… [Elsevier, 2017].

Chapter 15.

YouTube: search ‘ngu’ and ‘macadam’

www.Earthwords.co.uk (work in progress!)

‘Like’/follow Earthwords on Facebook

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TASK – yes, this is a workshop!�

Please take a sheet of A5 and draft a bookmark for your geopark, visitor centre, favourite critter, etc

Both sides.

And put it on the table tomorrow! We can discuss them.

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