1. Play, craft, design, feel: engaging students and the public with Victorian culture
- Author
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Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi, John Plunkett, and Morrison, K.A
- Subjects
PR - Abstract
Hadjiafxendi and Plunkett have used experiential learning in their individual teaching and research, and this chapter reflects on its benefits and limits. Their work on nineteenth-century material culture, handicrafts, and optical toys and devices, details the development of experiential learning in Victorian culture, and they have correspondingly used hands-on learning as a pathway to engage students. Play and performance can also engage different publics with Victorian culture, opening up research opportunities through co-production with creative practitioners and heritage institutions. Victorian popular science particularly lends itself to public engagement activities through its focus on embodied learning, and this chapter describes a joint project with Ilfracombe Museum, ‘Science at the Seaside,’ which devised a public program of art, literature, science and handicraft activities that sought to engage tourists and families with the Victorian fashion for marine biology and the well-known literary and scientific figures attracted by the north Devon coast.
- Published
- 2022