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.

With Questions - When We Know Nothing...

A gargoyle of sorts. A corbel carved into an ugly, twisted pug-nosed face. It looks like it has horns. Is it a devil? If so, what is it doing within the sacred space of a church? In this 'special' and highly symbolic space, nothing is for nothing; everything means something. Do we need to have prior knowledge in order to decipher this code, or can we decode it from its context?

I wonder how old it is? How would we date it? Perhaps we could look at some of the architectural features, such as the arch of which it is a part. Does its' age matter though; does this make a difference - and if so, then why?

And who, I wonder carved it? If I were to tell you that this was carved by Peter Blandon who was 47 years old when he carved this, some six hundred years ago; and that he died less than a year after this was completed, falling from some scaffolding just a few feet from where you stand - would this make you look again?

If, on the other hand, the stone has no provenance, and its' creator remains anonymous, is our engagement any the less. Our imagination is beginning to stretch, and we are 'seeing' beyond the facts and surfaces, into possibilities. However, It is still amazing to think about the actuality of the carved stone; that someone imagined this, and brought form to it, and that it has survived them for so long. Amazing too; all those countless eyes, of all those 'invisible' people who have looked up into the eyes looking down upon them. Who are the 'ghosts' who once responded to this presence, as we, in turn, respond to it now. And strange to think too that we - so real and now and matter of fact - are tomorrow's ghosts standing here. It is amazing, is it not, where wonder can lead you to...