Wot great timing! We are about to send out a "request for proposals" to design
and build our new discovery room which is aimed at both children - and adults.
We have completed a pedagogical outline to guide the designers and this is
available to anyone interested.

There is an excellent discovery room at the Australian War Memorial in
Canberra. It focusses on the First World War and features, inter alia, a
recruiting station (where height profiles on the wall show the dramatic decline
in physical standards for enlistment over the years of the War); a small trench
section; a casualty clearing station (with imaginative use of hampers with
objects and explanatory texts inside the covers); a parlour on the "home
front"; and a research centre where visitors can access a variety of
information, particular regarding service records, via computer. The problem
the Memorial's discovery room has is that it is buried deep in the bowels of
the building where it is very difficult for the casual visitor to find it.
Indeed, an unkind person might say that the chief discovery is discovering just
where the Discovery Room is hidden!!! However, the education staff there are
well aware of the problem and are examining alternatives.

I think it points to the need for a discovery room to be located  right in the
visitors' shining little faces, so that the sights, sounds and smells (we
intend to feed them, from time to time, bits from the current Canadian Forces
ration packs - rubberized ham & cheese omelet, cold out of the pack, yum yum I
don't think) drag the visitors into it. Ours will be in a VERY central location
and have a glass wall all down the side from which the visitors approach it,
with a sliding glass door that will usually be left open - the contents will
make it VERY inviting, we hope.

Katrina Stamp achieves the same objective with her VERY colourful and exciting
discovery room at the Auckland Museum, located at such a strategic point that
you have a hard time avoiding it!!!


Harry Needham
Canadian War Museum