Grand tours

I loved our class trip last night and I really enjoyed our guided tour.

I used to give guided tours of a historic building and I think it is quite an underrated skill, you have to know your subject inside out because people will ask you whatever pops in to their head, you need to be able to command your audience's attention and make facts fun and talking pretty much constantly and projecting your voice for a long time (2 hours in my case) is surprisingly tiring.

I think guided tours are a great example of public history in action, people enjoy them because they think they are getting extra knowledge and an enhanced visitor experience and the tour guide can ensure that the visitor's truly appreciate the story that the people interpreting the site want to be told.

I also like them because they are so subjective, good tour guides can make a person's experience of a site and bad ones just make you want to wander off elsewhere. A few of our speakers in class have mentioned that although working in museums and archives often appeals to those who want to hide away in a basement we are not likely to be able to avoid interacting with the public. This puts me in mind of a former colleague of mine who I would say is about the most intelligent person I know. He absorbs knowledge like a sponge but he finds interacting with people difficult and so despite his knowledge and enthusiasm he was not a great tour guide.

I'm glad that so many of our classes are practical and that we get the chance to interact with the speakers who come in as well as each other because I think our interpersonal skills are just as important a part of our training as the academic stuff.