Interview with David Anderson, 15 June 2009

David Anderson trained to teach history in the 1970s but after a short spell in a school, he moved into museum education and has spent his whole career in this field. In the late 1970s, museum education was under-developed. Influenced by his exposure to the Schools Council History Project, David worked with groups of teachers in Sussex to develop ways of using artefacts to teach children to think about the past and later moved to the Maritime Museum in Greenwich where he was responsible for the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Armada in 1988. He discusses the difficulties of building a bridge between the different cultures of museum curation and education. At the time of the interview, David was Director of Learning and Interpretation at the V & A and has since moved to become Director General of the National Museum, Wales. Interviewed by Dr Nicola Sheldon