The youth vote – Truro
Museums Journal asked a group of young journalists from Children's Express to tell us what they thought of Museums and Galleries Month exhibitions around the country.
| We thought that museums were full of boring old dusty pieces of pottery and stuff, but now we’ve found out that they are open and inviting. |
Turning Japanese, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro
Children's day is a special day in Japan, they hang carp banners out in the streets for the boys and put dolls in their window for the girls. On Saturday 5 May we went to see the Royal Cornwall Museum's version - we wanted to go to this museum because we were interested in learning more about the Japanese people and their way of life.
We liked the Japanese people because they were very friendly and really nice. We made origami balloons and hats and we watched a woman practising the Japanese art of calligraphy, drawing flowers with a brush and ink.
Compared to what we eat at home the food wasn't really that good. None of us was attracted to the idea of sushi, and only Vicky was brave enough to try it, which she thought was horrible. The red rice with seeds and beans in it was better, although Jodie didn't like it because she thought it was tasteless.
One of the highlights was a demonstration of Samurai fighting - very active and exciting. The warriors had swords and sticks and showed us how they would fight with them. This isn't something you see every day (unless perhaps you live in Japan), so it was great to be able to see it. We were very interested in the Samurai costumes - their trousers (if that is what they were) were much more baggy than the ones we were wearing - they looked more like a skirt.
We liked making the carp banners - colouring them and sticking them together. But our favourite part was dressing up. The shoes in particular were very different from our own, made from flat pieces of wood, with large wooden blocks underneath which made them difficult to walk in.
When we were little we thought that museums were full of boring old dusty pieces of pottery and stuff, but now we've found out that they are open and inviting, and have lots of different activities to try. We would like to visit the museum again to see what other things they might have in it.
This exhibition has proved that museums can be fun. If we had friends who laughed because we'd been to a museum we would tell them that they didn't know what they had missed - it was great.
About the team
This article was produced by Dominic Stringer-May, 9, and Vicky Palmer and Jodie Pearce, 11, from the Children's Express Plymouth bureau. They don't visit museums by choice, and now say they know a lot more about Japanese life than they did.
It was published in Museums Journal. For more reviews from the series, see column, left.
