The
Crystal Palace
Foundation

The Project Story

Crystal Palace Park (CPP) is one of the most important nineteenth century urban parks in Britain. Originally created to be the setting for the relocated and enlarged Crystal Palace that Paxton had designed and built for the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.

The project focused on investigating and celebrating the extraordinary legacy of design and engineering innovation found within the park. The heritage sources for the project being the mixture of existing buildings, surviving features of different eras, archaeological clues and a wide range of archival material.

Crystal Palace itself burned down in 1936, however, the grand terraces remain together with the bases of the Water towers, Dinosaurs, High Level Station Subway, Aquarium, Maze and new additions such as the National Sports Centre, Television transmitter, and Concert Platform.

The project proposal was to increase interpretation of the park and encourage more visitors, through an architecture education project for local schools, family events, a legacy of teaching resources and an educational and engaging pack of ‘orienteering’ cards designed to encourage families to visit and explore all areas of the park.

The last resource pack produced was in 1993 by the Crystal Palace Foundation http://www.crystalpalacefoundation.org.uk/shop/cpf-publications/crystal-palace-education-pack-3

The National Curriculum specifies that children should learn about significant historical events, people and places in their own locality. School workshops and the resultant teaching resources focused on interpreting the extraordinary wealth of heritage of the park and linked it to the curriculum to embed the topic and thereby increase schools’ engagement with the park,

A key objective was to increase visits from families and to increase and improve interpretation of heritage within the park. As a consequence family days were designed to be fun-filled, creative and informative for a wide age range. They were timed to take place when other events were taking place in the park, particularly the Crystal Palace Park Overground Festival.

There is currently signage for some of the features within the park and a dinosaur audio trail, in addition there are downloadable leaflets, for example a heritage trail downloadable from http://crystalpalacepark.org.uk/. However, as there is no overall guide to the heritage of the park aimed specifically at families so Our Hut has bridged this gap The ‘Crystal Palace Park Family Orienteering Pack’ has been designed to be interactive; use simple child friendly language; feature work from the overall project; challenge visitors to find and map a particular feature; and provide information about it. It has been designed to encourage repeat visits and a greater understanding of the heritage within the park.

There are many active and varied groups associated with Crystal Palace Park that demonstrates the desire for local people to be involved with the park and the project has enabled project new volunteers to: learn some new skills and gain new experience and knowledge.

Each pack of 36 cards come well packaged in a A6 size box. 33 of the cards have a full colour image on one side and explanatory text on ther reverse. The other 3 cards have an historical chronology of the park and acknowledgements.

Also in the pack is a double-side A4 map of the location of the structures in the park.

The Crystal Palace Foundation are acknowledged in the pack as an historical advisor.