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I've hesitated to reply to this because I don't have any helpful advice, and because what I do have to say threatens to take the subject on a side track. But I was struck again by the old "two nations divided by a common language" thing when I read this question and the attendant answers. I joined this GEM discussion group because I'm an American heritage interpreter looking for work in the field in Britain (that is, in heritage museum work/interpretation, not in American heritage in Britain....oh, you get the point), and had heard GEM was a great organization to help me get up to speed with what's going on in your country. The thing is, all the job descriptions for interpreters that I've seen in Britain have limited interpretation to written texts, mostly signage. Here, my job with the National Park Service centers around interpersonal interactions exactly like the ones you talked about...minus getting chatted up, of course, but because we're in uniform and such conversations are recognized by so much of the public as a standard part of the job, there's not much danger of that. My job--what I get paid for, in many ways--is engaging visitors in conversation about history. In fact, I just finished a four-session training course entitled "Facilitated Dialogue" designed to enhance such conversations. We call it "informal interpretation." The more official lecture-type talks that I do at the top of the hour, and the walking tours, and the living history touch-tables, and that type of thing, fall under the "formal interpretation" rubric. Signage...well, that's interpretation, too, but not a major part of what most of us do. Am I totally off base? Do British and American museum professionals use the terms the same way and I've just lucked into some very specific ads and web discussion posts? Is such informal interpretation common in British museums and heritage sites? If not, that could be part of the issue with your amorous visitors--they're not trained to expect it. I could (easily!) be wrong and you do informal interpretation all the time but call it something else, though, to be honest, that hasn't been my experience when I've visited heritage sites in Britain. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + GEM list: Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask] For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=GEM + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +