Escape Rooms and Outreach at Firing Line

Recently I had the pleasure of completing an internship at Firing Line Museum of the Welsh Soldier at Cardiff Castle. Over a course of ten days spread over five weeks, I took on the role of Public Engagement Officer for the museum. This involved me creating an activity for the summer to encourage people to engage with the museum and vice versa.

After walking around the museum taking notes several times and plenty of ideas jotted down, I finally settled on creating an ‘Escape the Room’ treasure hunt. I looked at the ‘traditional’ format of the treasure hunt and decided it could be seen as overused and so decided to change it up by using puzzles. Outside of the museum walls, escape rooms are becoming increasingly popular and so decided to use this popularity to encourage more people to engage with the museum. I also thought that using a ‘codebreaker’ theme would fit in with a military museum and should mix well with the pre-existing trails already run by the museum.

I began the process by researching military communications as well as some campaigns, including the Zulu and Boer wars. From beginning this research, I moved to looking at escape rooms and the kind of puzzles and clues they use. This helped me organise the activity and develop some clues and codes. Alongside the sheet of questions, I also gave the staff and answer sheet and created certificates for successful completion and evaluation sheets.

I also had to market the activity as part of my role. In order to do this, I created a poster for use in the museum and on social media if needed. However, the most exciting piece of marketing was…a YouTube video! This was the first time I filmed and edited a video so, whilst being nerve-wracking, was very interesting and exciting. I asked one of the volunteers, Daniel, to help me out and be the star of my ‘Hollywood’ film. We had great fun filming and I really enjoyed editing. You can now watch the video here: https://youtu.be/0gCOrijIm3Q

Once the activity was launched, we collected feedback and discovered it was slightly too hard for some of the visitors. Therefore, I remodified the trail to make the clues easier and more accessible for more visitors. My first clue as to the difficulty was being called Turing and the trail being lovingly nicknamed ‘Bletchley Park’ by the staff. I think it quite suits, don’t you?

Over the course of my internship, I also had the honour of helping in gun and helmet talks. Through this, I was able to learn about the guns and helmets until I could speak confidently to guests about most of the objects. Another fun part was being able to dress up as Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps and entertaining visitors along with my Norman friend. Everyday brought something different and I never knew what to expect when I walked down the stairs.

I learnt so much over my time at the museum and had the most incredible experience. Thank you to everyone at the museum for making the experience and I looked forward to returning to volunteer in September!