You have a group of enthusiastic research volunteers, but they need a plan. Here is my visual suggestion when I advised West Horsley Place during the winter of 2022/23. What resulted was the discovery by volunteers of stories about servants, gardens and VIPS. Instead of a display, using the new research, I developed family friendly hands-on tours led by volunteers.

Working with horticulturist Jo Hooper I created an info pack for Highdown Gardens volunteers to help with guided tours. We discovered what was useful: use the map of the site as a storyboard; chunks of information grouped around your core themes (e.g. Place, Plants, People); and if you can, use props. Let the volunteers choose their favourite stories so they can enjoy the storytelling. This PDF shows some of my training templates.

No, not all historical records are on the internet, as I have found in many projects and especially for the Highdown Gardens research in 2020. This illustration I created, shows the mixture of research tools and sources I have used to explore the forgotten stories of Highdown. Even with lockdowns you can network via email, and talk to experts on the phone.

Attention grabbing evaluation as I hate Excel for this type of work. Script by me and illustration by Lisa Holdcroft. This is an excerpt of visual evidence for National Trust managers. It shows visitor and volunteer comments after testing Lisa’s unique family guide leaflet of Chartwell House, Spring 2018.

I edited this, took some photos and together with the amazing graphic designer Jennie Osborne produced this as an ‘end of term report’ for this Heritage Lottery Funded project. See page 20 for my top 5 tips working on community heritage projects.

An example that history can be fun, not always dry facts. Local writer Steve Hill made three poems to raise awareness about the Brighton ‘folly’ the Pepper Pot designed by Charles Barry. Using colour acetate and take away menu cards I made this comic strip using the text. It was published in 2009 in the Hanover Directory magazine.

This is a summary developed after the most intense community project I have worked on together with fans from Crystal Palace Football Club. Some of this involved discovering memorabilia in dusty attics. At the start I was out of my comfort zone but managed to develop a unique display in less than three months!

A flowchart that I designed to show everybody involved in the complex touring exhibition ‘Ancient Egypt: Digging for Dreams’ who was responsible for what. I was project managing it all. This became an important three page chart for the tour partners of Croydon Clocktower, Petrie Museum and the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.

This is based on a simple list that museums education guru Fraser Swift developed in the 1990s. I keep on coming back to this checklist and adding more detail. I am also experimenting with cheap Basecamp software to help with communication and sharing information with different clients.