Off the Peg 

Rucksacks Go Live! 

 

Yes, the rucksacks are strutting their stuff!  

Youngsters with their families or schools are enjoying Runnymede with the LDT rucksacks on backs, while hands, feet and eyes are exploring the landscape in all sorts of unexpected and exciting ways.  

What's special about the steps in the woodland?  How do you find out the age of a tree?  Why is there a tea bag in my rucksack? What's that bug?  Who was John Kennedy?!  Who was King John??!!  The rucksacks can reveal all.

Feedback has been glowing.  Rucksacks - and families - often disappear for 3 or 4 hours at a time.  Believe me, the kids come back with shining eyes.  As one family commented, children often don't want to read traditional infomation signs but the rucksack activities work reallly well.  The best comment I've heard so far - 

 "Even Dad enjoyed it"

  

 

 

 

 

Ready to Go Rucksacks

Runnymede is ready for adventure!  

 

A row of hooks has been added to the features of the newly refurbished Magna Carta Tearoom.  Along with your coffee and cakes, soup and sandwiches, you can now borrow a rucksack, stuffed with a different sort of goodies.  

Yes, the Runnymede explorer rucksacks are now available.  Grab a pack (remember to sign it out at the cafe) and allow your youngsters to embark on a voyage of discovery around Runnymede, delving into the history and landscape of this historic area.  

Open up the trail guide: where shall we go first?   Shall we try the Magna Carta memorial and read the story of King John in the shade (or shelter!) of its circular roof?  Climb the steps through the trees (one step for every state in the Union) to the J F Kennedy Memorial?  Run through the wide grassy meadows - what happened here?  Whoa - there is a huge river flowing by; where did that come from?

Why is there a tea bag in the pack?  Why a measuring tape? A paint brush?  What's this old document all about?

Borrow a rucksack and find out!

Go out number 5 and explore the womders of Runnymede!

Celebrate!

We had a fabulous launch and celebration at the National Trust Magna Carta Tearoom in May. So good to have the partners together to celebrate the rucksacks and a successful project. The Mayor of Runnymede, Councillor Yvonna Lay opened proceedings and launched a good party as well as a great project!  

The rucksacks are presented to the press!

A welcome cup of tea

Trust to Trust - Kennedy Memorial Trust's Annie Thomas
talking to Landscape Design Trust's Sheila Harvey 

Testing, Testing

Runnymede! 

Testing the Rucksacks - Hannah Owen, Gatton Trust's education trainee reports:

What a day outdoors we had. The sun was shining and the bugs were flying creating the perfect setting for a fun family day out, if of course you had one of our green rucksacks to zip up, pack up and take on a hunt around the meadows and woods for some juicy finds, facts and figures.

Each rucksack was bursting with bug pots – microscopes - measuring tapes – maps and information cards to guide each group through Runnymede, past to present.

Here we stood on the same ground that King John and his barons had met nearly eight hundred years ago to sign the Magna Carta, the written promise that the king would govern England in accordance to the feudal law. This moment marked an attempt to stop the abuse of power and the suffering of England’s people by a king, much to King Johns disdain.

Nearby sits the JFK memorial and the Kennedy steps, which once conquered provide a beautiful view of the surrounding meadows and the River Thames running by. The information provided at each memorial in combination with the booklets and fun facts in our rucksacks created an enchanting hunt through history suitable for both adults and children, keeping everyone happy.

The theme of freedom rang true in every essence of the day, families were given all the tools they needed, a few hinters and then allowed to venture off in search of their treasures – be it woodlice or inscriptions in stones.

It also provided a chance to get your heart pumping and feet stomping (big and small) in and amongst nature, learning about a poignant time in our heritage along the way too.

It’s safe to say from this trial day, the rucksacks are here to stay! And if that’s not enough to entice you there’s easy road access, parking and a café to refresh and recharge those much needed batteries.
Left: the trial team, testing HQ - thank goodness it was a sunny day - and featuring rucksack no. 5

Gatton Trust provides the specialist Education input to the Landscapes Live! project 

What a Fabulous Day!

Just spent the day at Runnymede, in glorious sunshine, while local (and some not so local) families tried out our brand new rucksacks.  Each of these fascinating green packs contains an array of activities and stories which aim to bring the meadows of Runnymede alive.  Thank you to all the families who took part and thank you for your incredibly useful feed back at the end of the day.  

Our young adventurers set off!

Runnymede Discovered!

The school visits have started! 

It is delightful to see groups of youngsters so enjoying the historic spaces of Runnymede’s meadows and woods.  

This is literally a hands on experience.  How exciting to see small hands exploring the etched stone of the Magna Carta and J F Kennedy memorials, the texture of oak tree bark and hunting for mini beats in the hedgerows and meadow edges.  

Local families will also have the opportunity to explore Runnymede too, with two group tours timed for half term (Tuesday, 29th October).  Details on how to book will soon be available on http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/runnymede/things-to-see-and-do/events/

                    

Digging and Delving

Great news - Landscapes Live! careers off in a whole new direction 

It all started, innocently enough, with a bit of research into the Kennedy Memorial Archives to find some new resources for the school visits.  Within days, Annabel Downs, the project volunteer researcher, was uncovering some serious new stuff on Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and the design of the J F Kennedy memorial. 

Annabel writes:

I’ve been interested in Jellicoe since I first pulled out one of his drawings from his plan chest at the Landscape Institute library, and there is nothing quite like looking closely at one of Jellicoe’s original plans, inked and pencilled on tracing paper. 

I am enthusiastic in joining the team with this Runnymede project on several counts - the idea of encouraging children to explore this site and become curious about a 20c designed landscape is brilliant and we could do so much more of this. But the hard information about the process of designing the Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede was, I thought, fairly limited. I knew the LI archive had a number of Susan Jellicoe’s photos but there was none of the original drawings. I was even more keen to help with the research on this project because curiously, when I was working on the LI's archive, this was the one aspect that generated most queries.

Because the focus of the Kennedy Memorial project was on the life and death of President John F Kennedy, it was dealt with at the highest level in Government: Prime Ministers past, present and future (Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson), Cabinet Office, Foreign Office, Treasury, Department of Education and Science, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Crown Estate Commissioners, The Lord Mayor of London, the Governor of the Bank of England, Dame Margot Fonteyn, UK and US Ambassadors past and present, Her Majesty the Queen, Vic Feather, a good number of Lords, and a great number of civil servants all played a part in making this happen, with the whole thing moving almost at a sprint at times to get everything completed for the inauguration ceremony on May 14^th 1965.

I am pleased to say that a lot of Jellicoe is being discovered peeping through all this, of which more anon...