The Heritage Buddy

I am proud to share that I have completed and delivered my first EVER living history workshop outside of my autism group as a session lasting at least 20 minutes (which again, I would like to bring these workshops to the younger age groups as part of their programme) or a brief 10-15 minute festival act.  It all started as a new year's goal!  Finding opportunities to deliver living history and costumed interpretation workshops in communities was one of my top aspirations for this year; the idea hit me last year after visiting Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and meeting a costumed interpreter acting as Jackie Fisher (father of the Dreadnoughts and known for the first use of OMG) when he served on HMS Warrior as Lieutenant, then meeting the volunteers at the Mary Rose Museum who were in period costume, then the inspiration hit me -  how about I bring costumed interpretation and living history into my volunteering? I was lucky to have the honour of providing some wartime e...

I stepped out of Portsmouth Harbour train station one freezing cold Saturday afternoon in January this year. I was slowly making my way to my hotel and stopped to admire how beautiful HMS Warrior looked against the winter sunset over the harbour, so I sat down on a bench to bring myself out of anxiety about getting lost, shutting down or dissociating and losing awareness of my surroundings and into the present. After a moment, I noticed an obelisk with HMS Royal Oak inscribed on it; I quickly learnt it was a memorial commemorating the 85th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak. I knew I had to take some photos for some volunteering. (This memorial will be discussed in a future post - watch this space!) 😀 The reason I was visiting Portsmouth was because I am a board member at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and our board was encouraged to visit for branding reasons. After spending a couple of hours chilling in my hotel room by video-calling family to let them know ...