The First Few Minutes...

Expectations...

The venue where the tour is due to take place is unfamiliar to you. You arrive with only a few minutes to spare, slightly flustered. You might previously have been on a number of tours/talks at heritage sites, or this might be a new experience for you. Perhaps you have a level of expertise in the subject to be covered, and you are slightly anxious that the guide will be 'lightweight' or - heaven forbid! - inaccurate. Maybe though you are new to this subject, and you are worried that it will be pitched above your head, and that you will be made to feel stupid. Other, slightly weary travellers, might have previously encountered the tweed-clad guide, a curious creature whose sense of equality leads them to recite everything they know about a site, regardless (!). The list of scenarios is almost endless...

So, faced with all those different thoughts in all those different heads; faced with that array of different faces all focusing on you, how are we to begin?

A Great Greet...

Before the formal delivery begins, it is crucial to engage and to be engaging. Ask people where they've come from, if they've been here before. If possible make them laugh. Be relaxed and be receptive. This isn't just good in terms of enhancing your visitors' experience, it also provides you with crucial information that might require adjustments to what you are going to say, and/or how you're going to present it. I try and have some 'sweeteners' for children. This might be a curious object, food for thought, or even, quite literally - food! If you win over the children, the parents are delighted and the group relaxes.

Advanced Organisers...

I think that orientation is key. People learn better when they're relaxed, and when they know, broadly, what's coming. So it is important to signpost at the outset what we are going to say and where we're going to go, as well as how long it will take. So once the Adanced Organisers are set out, what next?

The Opening Line...

Yes, I know that, technically, the Advanced Organisers are the opening line, but, spiritually (if you will) the opening line starts when the substance of our interpretative experience begins. And how important it is to get this right. As I seem to be focusing on the cathedral a lot, here's one opening line...

'We value this building because it's ancient now, but it was new once - and perhaps that was a problem.'

I like this one. It's a counter-intuitive perspective. I can assume that most people have turned up for their 'tour' to focus on the old-ness of the building, not to think about it as it once was - new. It immediately invites us to stretch our historical imagination, and looking at the venerable old building through this prism we are (potentially) taken to new ways of seeing it.