A festive farce from Twinkle and Jingle

It’s that time of year again when Santa’s Workshop sets up in the Eureka! Theatre. Inside our resident elves, Twinkle and Jingle, make the last few preparations before the big day. But (as always) something goes horribly wrong and the elves need a helping hand from some children in order to save Christmas.

This year’s play, 'Santa's Magical Toyshop' is not the first adventure that our elves have been involved in. Last year they found themselves in a similar mess for our 2009 Christmas show. I wrote last year’s show, and again volunteered to write the ‘difficult sequel’. I was determined to write a different script which contained new elements; it was important to me that the show was not the same as before and merely dressed differently. I also wanted to make sure that the 2010 play did not deviate too far from the framework we established the previous year as it proved very successful. As a result the activities the children (and adults) take part in during Santa’s Magical Toyshop are vastly different to last year but the dynamic interactions and banter between the two characters has remained constant.

Enablers turning the Theatre into Santa's Workshop!

The interactive quality of the show has been increased since last year, and requires many children from the audience to join the elves onstage and physically help them to complete their important jobs before Santa wakes up.

Where younger children will respond to the interaction of the performance, older children and adults will appreciate the humour in the guise of Twinkle and Jingle’s frantic dialogue. Jingle, the overworked and underpaid ‘line manager’ elf clashes with his docile yet kind-hearted worker, Twinkle. There are many one-liners within their interaction specifically aimed at an older audience that will amuse them while not confusing the young ones.

Writing for an interactive show differs in many ways to writing for the stage. A key difference is that you cannot be too narrow; that is, there must be room for the performers to improvise should anything go wrong including: the children not giving an expected answer or a toddler wandering onstage and starting to dismantle the set. The performers must be more fluid and be ready to change the contents of the show in response to the situations that occur, which is not possible if they have strict dialogue patterns or subtle punch-lines.

One of the main things that attract people to the show is, of course, the opportunity to meet Santa. All children can speak with Santa at the end of the show and get a photo with him should they wish. But the staging is beneficial for children who are intimidated by Santa as they have support, from all other children in the audience, a gentle introduction to him, and the choice to either go to see Santa up close or just  watch him from afar. So due to way it is staged no children have to miss out on the Christmas experience.

It’s fantastic to see a project through to the end and due to everyone involved the finished production is hilarious, heart-warming and full of Christmas magic.

Ben Healey is an Enabler at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum

Sledging

Wow, what a lot of snow! Can you believe it? And all before Christmas too!

If you’re anything like us here at Eureka! then I’m sure you’ve had a great time playing out in the snow on the days off from school and work. We might not have had a stretch of days off from work, but we did make time to go play in the snow. Across the Eureka! Park we made snow angels, threw loads of snow balls and, of course, went sledging.



Traditionally, people would use wooden sledges called toboggans, but these days you’re most likely to find sledges made of plastic. The great thing about sledging though is that anyone can do it, with almost anything! We didn’t have a sledge of our own, but all it took was some imagination and creativity to put together our own ‘sledging devices’ out of cardboard and plastic.

Now, if you ask me, I’m most likely to say the bigger the hill, the better the sledging. It’s just because I like to get the sledge going as fast as possible. For safety’s sake, make sure you should only sledge on a hill that you feel safe with, and before you start sledging take a look around. Can you see what is at the bottom? Are there any humps and bumps that might throw you off your sledge? It’s always good to make a thorough check. At Eureka! the hill we used had a nice, long slope, and we were able to go quite far and fast!

There’s a lot more to sledging that just sliding down by yourself. Why not take your grown-ups along for the ride? Or see if you can fit another person on your sledge. You might even try lying on your front and sledging, or if you have two sledges, racing against someone to the bottom to see who has the faster sledge.

There are so many different games you can play, and it’s completely up to you! So go on, get out there to play and discover as many different ways of sledging as you can. You might even show them off the next time you come to Eureka!.

And hey, if you don’t think that sledging is for you, then you can’t beat building a snow fort and having a good old snowball fight with your friends!

What’s your favourite way to have fun in the snow?

Ben Guifoyle is an Outreach Enabler at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum

Making a 'Big Give' for Eureka!

As a charity, fundraising at Eureka! is always busy, as we develop and fund new outreach programmes for schools and the local community or raise money to improve the museum itself. But 2010 has been a particularly interesting and varied year, not least of which because we’ve been working to raise 2.9 million pounds!

The majority of our efforts this year have been spent fundraising for the new flagship gallery, Me and My World.  Me and My World will be the reinvention of the existing Me and My Body Gallery, one of our most famous and beloved galleries.  With the financial climate as it is currently it has been really difficult at times to make any headway, but now we are in a really good position, having raised £1.7m towards our final target of £2.9m. With the gallery set to be launched in 2012, we still have a long way to go, but the progress has been good.

Artist's conception of exhibits in Me and My World

Our most recent adventure in fundraising for Me and My World is something totally new for Eureka!.  We have been selected to take part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge.  This is an online fundraising idea that aims to get our visitors and supporters donating online.  All donations made between 6th December and 10th December will then be doubled.  This felt incredibly daunting at first as we have not tried to fundraise in this way before and we were unsure how it would be received, so we have been working hard to make sure that we get it right.

First of all we had to secure a £5,000 pledge to act as some of the match funding.  Eureka! is in the fortunate position that our Chair of Trustees wanted to make this pledge which made things much easier for us.  We could then set about talking to other trustees and ex-trustees to seek their support during the fundraising week in December.  This exercise was also successful and we have secured pledges to donate on the 6th December totalling £5,500! 

Our next step will be to send out e-mails to all our visitors and business contacts to seek their support.  It’s hard to gauge how much people will want to support our campaign, but we won’t know until we try.  With Eureka!’s success as a visitor attraction many people will not recognise our role as an educational charity which makes it even harder to ask for support in reaching our £20,000 target.

We hope that everyone who has visited Eureka! (including me back in 1992 when I was ten with my brother Dan and my Auntie Carol) and had an amazing experience talking to Scoot, learning about Archimedes and most importantly playing in Marks and Spencer’s will see the value in making sure the museum is renewed and refreshed for the next generation of children.

The Big Give will be taking place from 10am on December 6th 2010 and donations will be doubled up until December 10th.  You can donate by visiting the Eureka! Big Give website or learn more about what we have been up to on our website or by contacting the Fundraising Team.

Kate Goldring is the Fundraising Manager for Eureka! The National Children's Museum