Inside and Out

Family Literacy at Eldon House,
London, Ontario

Cydna Mercer, Project Coordinator

Learners in the "Inside and Out" project work on their journals in the kitchen of historic Eldon House

During July and August 1998, the London Regional Art and Historical Museums (LRAHM) collaborated with the London and Middlesex Literacy Network and the Limberlost Chaplaincy to deliver a family literacy programme called Inside and Out for low-income mothers and their children from the Limberlost Community. For 6 half-days, eight mothers and thirteen children (ages seven to thirteen years) shared and recreated experiences from 19th and 20th century life at LRAHM's Eldon House, London's oldest surviving home.

Eldon House was built in 1834 near the forks of the Thames river for a retired British naval officer. As an historic home with a working kitchen and permanent displays of original furnishings and other artifacts, it provided a stable environment for developing the program. It also offered a more intimate and less intimidating setting for families than a traditional museum. For several mothers, the house evoked positive childhood memories of grandmother's house; for others, the fascinating but disturbing 19th-century trophy collections of African spears and shields, as well as the remains of exotic animals, were cause for discussions about Victorian imperialism and colonialism.

Inside and Out was an intergenerational literacy project with mothers and children participating as co-learners. The sessions featured collaborative instruction so that while improving their literacy skills, parents were at the same time assisting their children in their learning. In addition to using oral and communication skills and acquiring new vocabulary and knowledge, there was also social and cultural learning. Since many of the learners had never visited Eldon House, part of the focus was on helping the learners become acquainted with a London historic site and neighbourhood and feel more comfortable with the city at large. The project also tried to demystify and generate interest in museum visits with family and friends on free admission days and to encourage participants to take pride in their personal histories and self-expression, while learning about and participating in the life of a 19th and early 20th-century household.

Each week, two Eldon House interpreters devised several activities to help participants get to know Eldon House "inside and out." Some of the "outside" activities included: a walk around the historic neighbourhood, a visit to LRAHM for an art lesson, playing hoops and croquet on the Eldon House lawn and identifying herbs and flowers in its gardens. "Inside" activities ranged from exploring Eldon House room by room, including behind the-scenes looks at the maid's quarters, attic and basement, to preparing snacks in the kitchen, playing parlour games, listening to ghost stories and having the children dress up in period costumes.

Literacy activities took a variety of forms: measuring ingredients for homemade ice-cream and lemonade, following and giving instructions for games and talking about the house and its history. Most importantly, each participant kept a written journal of each day's activities, including a record of events, as well as activity sheets and visual material, such as drawings. The journals remained at Eldon House until the last day of the program when the learners took them home along with a souvenir photo and a video for each family that was compiled over the six weeks to keep as a permanent record of their participation in the project.

The garden party held on the final day of the project was not the last goodbye. This fall, two of the mothers volunteered to take a group of neighbours from the Limberlost community to Eldon House. In December, all the Inside and Out families and their guests will meet for a reunion at Eldon House, an event everyone is eagerly planning for and anticipating. This project was a positive experience for both the museum and the literacy learners. LRAHM hopes to use Inside and Out as a model for future family literacy projects involving similar communities in London.