We, the volunteers, have now had two or three training sessions with Canon Pete Wilcox, the exhibits have arrived from Stafford where they have been on display for the last three weeks, and we are now making our final preparations. I am double checking the schedule as I am on duty most days in the coming two weeks, and need to ensure that I am at the right place at the right time. I also need to reread my notes. We are not tour guides, there isn't time for this, but it will be just as well to revise what I do know as visitors are bound to ask certain questions. After a couple of days it will become quite clear what most of the questions are about, but right now we can only guess.
Visitors have by now booked their free tickets, and tomorrow, Friday, the local good and the great get to preview the exhibition, ready for the visitors the following day. I am going with my wife Nina who has been part of the team that organised the tour (along with museum directors, cathedral canons, and other council officers) so that when we start on Saturday morning I will be quite clear where everything is, not where I think it is. Saturday morning will find me as a Marshall during the first morning shift. There will be a steep learning curve, as the largest number of visitors are expected over the first weekend. We cannot therefore practice with a small number of visitors, but must get things right first time.
To this end Canon Pete Wilcock has been at great pains to have the volunteers work through the job descriptions, schedules, and plans, and over the last few weeks we have spotted problems and opportunities which have been incorporated into the arrangements. This week we have been considering how to adjust the schedules to deal with other activities within the cathedral that might impinge upon the hoard exhibition arrangements, such as the Royal British Legion concert, or more particularly, the practice time needed by the brass band before their concert but while the exhibition is still open to the public. There's also a wedding, but the bride and groom have entered into the spirit of the things by booking their guests into the exhibition as they make their way from the West door to the Lady Chapel at the East end.
What have we not thought about? We don't know how many no-shows there will be, though the experience from Stafford suggests that there will be more than compensated for by the number of people who arrive without a ticket. Will we be able to move our visitors through the Chapter House, the main display area, within the crucial 20 minutes? The whole procedure depends upon our being able to move groups of 30 through every 20 minutes: getting people together in the North Transept ready to move through into the North Quire Aisle, leading the group into the Chapter House exhibition area, and then after 20 minutes leading the same group out into the interactive area for a further 20 minutes while another pair of Marshalls leads the next group into the exhibition. Our group will then exit into the area between the Quire and the East window (St Chad's Shrine). At that point we two Marshalls will have 20 minutes before taking another group of 30 through, and so on and so forth throughout the day for three weeks. I'm only guiding in the mornings, and there will be some change of role as the days roll by and we feel confident in what we are doing. I will be checking tickets one day and ringing the change over bell on several occasions (while watching no-one sneaks in through the Presbytery Gate).
After three weeks the crowds will disperse, the treasures leave for Tamworth Castle, and the cathedral staff will at last be able to breath out. It should be quite an occasion, and on a scale no-one could ever have envisaged. Only a week or so ago there were the Lichfield Festival concerts in the nave, and I have just received our invitations for the Cathedral Patrons annual dinner in the nave, in September. People flow through the cathedral on so many occasions - great stuff. I might even get to stay for Evensong on the odd afternoon.
And if you don't get to see the exhibition either at Lichfield or at Tamworth there are other options: the (US) National Geographic will be displaying the Hoard during the Fall (sorry, a lapse into US-speak which comes from living around the corner from the National Geographic some years ago), and then it returns to the cathedral in the New Year.
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