So what about next year?

I am actually on holiday from Catalyst but being away from the workface helps to be creative rather than being bogged down in day to day minutiae.
So my thoughts have turned towards the new programme for 2011/12 which is usually published in mid June and sent out about 4,000 schools.
The first thing I need to do is to check the school holiday dates which this time are much more sensible. The current academic year has seen half term and Easter holiday dates all over the place which has caused us real problems at Catalyst as our visitors come from across many education authorities with different holiday dates.
However next year everything seems to synchronise which is a really good thing and should help us with visitor figures.
Some local schools were only actually in school for 6 days in April - so of course no-one was going to arrange a trip out but we also had to contend with Easter Bank holidays and other authorities being off school. In the end we made the decision to run three weeks of activities - hence all the candy floss!!

A couple of my guest speakers have decided to retire so next year I will have to think about either creating more shows or finding speakers.
We have already decided to highlight Healthy Humans because we have two or three activities that fit into the theme so with another one or two we should have a good section broadening our range.
It looks like we will be creating a special space for story telling - watch this space for more information and photos once we get going on it! I think we will be very creative.
I am also going to make the historical/object handling ideas actually happen. We have been working on this for a while but with a new deadline to meet we will get going next week.
Apart from that I think we just need to tweak the programme details and highlight Murder at the Manor because it is such a good session and schools haven't really picked it up yet.
So back to work on Monday and put all these ideas into practice.