Good morning all,
It’s that time of year again and our weekly summer holiday family workshops began last week. Our workshops are drop-in between 1 &4pm with usually an influx at 1pm, dropping off after 3pm. Last week however a youth group came along with 32 children! I was on holiday so am receiving this information second hand but apparently they rang the reception team to say they were coming but didn’t indicate how many and said they would stagger it across 3 groups but there was a 12 then 20 at once! A lot of the children needed support with the activity and they didn’t have many adult helpers so our volunteers were occupied helping them and couldn’t help the other families much. They also wanted to eat their lunches in the workshop space, which we don’t allow.
I have dedicated lunch spaces so I am thinking of contacting them and saying they can use these spaces to eat their lunch on arrival and encourage them to come to the workshop at 3pm when hopefully it will be quieter but there’s no guarantee it will be. I wondered if I am able to specify an adult : child ratio to ensure adequate support – has anyone done this? I don’t want to discourage them from coming but want to ensure that our regular families are not put off from coming along, as having 32 from one group did change the dynamic of the session. We have never had to issue timed tickets for workshops and would rather not go down this route this summer as the workshops have been advertised as drop-in. Workshops are usually led by a freelance artist with volunteer support. I am the only education staff member and can’t always be at the workshops.
I know this is a nice problem to have but any tips would be gratefully received!
Thank you, kind regards,
Kirsty
Kirsty Hall
Education Officer, Victoria Gallery & Museum
University of Liverpool
Liverpool, L69 3DR
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