Brownies, Guides and Scouts Badges

Some of the requests I get are not conventional, but end up with very interesting outcomes.  Recently a Scout group leader got in touch with me about putting together a package for the Scouts heritage badge.  I had a look at the outline for the badge and realised what an excellent opportunity this was.  So I wrote a Richard III and Leicester based heritage version of the badge and we will be trialing this on the lucky Scout group in November.   Once it has been trialed I will get a copy on our website for other groups to have a go.  Currently it is based on the Greyfriars dig and a little bit of the discovery background, but I am sure this can be adapted if you are not from Leicester or Leicestershire.   Feedback is always welcome on these types of project.

Following on from the Scout’s request the Brownies and Guides got in touch.  We looked at their badges to see what we could do, but then decided to think a little bigger.  The Brownies and Guides have a mechanism for designing your own badge.  So we have begun planning a Richard III Challenge Badge.   At first this sounded quite simple.  There are plenty of topics that would be suitable to incorporate into a badge like this,  it is the act of translating these topics into exciting activities that are not the same at classroom based activities and would suit a session in a church or community hall.   I have had some help, the advice from the leaders has been incredibly useful such as, they like cooking, chocolate and the younger ones love glitter.   The key point is to not create lessons, but fun activities that are very different to experiences in school.  It is a challenge for me too, maybe I could have a badge when it is finished!

This week has been fairly quiet on the meeting front which means I have been able to get on with some of these types of activities.  I did have a trip to Oxford to present the Greyfriars Project story to the Humanities Discussion Group at St Anne’s College.  They were intrigued by the discovery and had some very interesting questions.

There are two events coming up that are worth mentioning now, the new book about the dig Richard III: The King under the Car Park will be launched on 15th November (details to follow, this is open to the public) and Shakespeare’s Richard III is being performed at the Nottingham Playhouse with added pre-show talks about the discovery.