More than half a lifetime in interpretation and ten years of producing your newsletter.
Maybe it’s because I’m approaching my 50th year, or because I will soon celebrate ten years of working freelance since I left full-time guaranteed employment, but I have been feeling reflective lately.
I also realised that it is ten years since I agreed to help Thorsten Ludwig, our former IE Managing Director, with the newsletter and am still here as your News Coordinator all this time later. Maybe it is time I let someone else have a go?! Feel free to get in touch if you see yourself being more active in the news/communication role to support IE.
I feel incredibly lucky in my work life, having accidentally fallen into interpretation more than 25 years ago and have worked on a huge variety of subjects and in more countries than I can count. My recent work trips have included a project for a client that I started working for 18 years ago. It is such a pleasure to still support them and it feels like ‘coming home’ when I visit. There is a Welsh word that has no direct English translation – ‘Hiraeth’ – which means such a strong sense of belonging that you feel homesick for a place. I feel privileged to have developed strong relationships with other lovely people in the HI field to the extent that I am welcomed to feel at home at their sites. Current and former staff members are definitely in the category of friends rather than just colleagues after all this time. The same trip allowed me to visit three other IE members who are now friends after meeting at IE conferences in the past. Another recent project re-ignited contact with a friend and former colleague from 21 years ago when we realised our old skills were still the perfect fit for a collaboration.
25 years since the opening of the first visitor attraction I worked for, and with some amazing projects under my belt including everything from a single graphic panel or the tiniest little community-run visitor centre to the largest museum in the world in Kuwait, and a real mixture of content, such as script-writing for David Tennant to voiceover about the Loch Ness Monster, engaging schools with water conservation or offshore wind energy, snippets of the Roman Empire, and lots of wildlife and biodiversity conservation, including for UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves, I like to think that my skills and attitude towards HI implementation have improved and my perspectives have broadened. I’ll certainly look forward to continuing to develop and work with more heritage sites and communities over the coming years.
My conclusion …working in HI is good for the soul if not always the bank balance!
Looking back on the anniversary of supporting IE, in those ten years the stories we have shared on the pages of these newsletters are just as diverse and rich. It is an absolute pleasure to hear from and work with so many of you, members and non-members, to spread your news and experiences to the wider membership and beyond. It has been an enriching experience for me to support and collaborate with authors from more than 55 countries. Where will the next ten years take us? Don’t forget to get in touch if you’d like to join the team!
Marie Banks is a freelance interpretation specialist, copywriter and editor, trading under www.zebraproof.uk. Prior to this, she spent more than 15 years in the museums sector as an Exhibition Manager and then as an international consultant. Marie is IE’s News Coordinator and can be contacted at: marie.banks@interpret-europe.net.
To cite this article: Gkini, Penelope (2025) ‘A haunted house or just a national hero home-museum?‘ in Interpret Europe Newsletter 1-2025, pg.22.
Available online: PDF Newsletter Spring 2025
