The Southampton Tourist Guides Association are a great supporter of BALH and of Local History and have been members for several years. To become a qualified tourist guides takes a great deal of commitment, the STGA have guides at White, Green and Blue Badge levels. White Badge is for a fixed route tour, usually around an historic building or site, Green badge enables you to lead a range of walking tours around a town or city and Blue Badge is the regional qualification covering a large geographical area and with added skills in coach guiding. Most guides at level one and two are volunteer guides and are driven by a desire to tell the history of their home time or local heritage site. Blue Badge Guides generally are working and this is their career.

The STGA were founded back in 1976 and are one of the earliest tourist guiding associations in the country to be trained in what was then a new national qualification. To train at green badge level takes around a year of study and practical training, after having a successful interview to join the course. STGA have been fortunate over the years to have successfully attracted sponsorship to cover training which otherwise can cost around £1000 per person for green badge. The Association also oversee the process of getting courses accredited by the Institute of Tourist Guiding who assess guides training and give out the badges.

The first few months of training are in the classroom with weekly lectures on the history of Southampton, plus specialist talks on architecture, on key themes like literature, religion, monuments etc. There is a lot of private study, reading, learning how to undertake research, plus visits to museums, archives, libraries. There are quizzes and homework, which also helps prepare for upcoming exams. The course then moves onto communications skills, how to be effective speakers, planning, structure and timing of commentaries, developing personal style – as well as enjoying oneself. The students think about body language, tone of voice, and content. Learning information is often the easy bit, deciding how to use it the hard part, knowing how much visitors need to be told – Must Tell / Should Tell / Could Tell. After practice in the classroom, it is time to go out on the route and to put things into practice with the added logistics to be considered. Never walk whilst talking; pay attention to the welfare of everyone in your group; positioning to be heard; keeping it short and simple but not underestimating your audience’s intelligence or over-estimating their previous knowledge; thinking about how to relate a person to a period and a date to a relevant event; how to deal with questions. After that it’s practice, practice, practice.

Then it is exam time, firstly a written exam of hundred or so questions with short answers and three questions requiring longer answers. This is followed by a practical exam. Finally, students have to produce a project, researching a new walk linked to one of three themes. Students have to successfully complete all three strands to achieve the coveted green badge. After qualifying guides will lead a variety of walks, most towns will have key ‘bread and butter’ walks but in any given year there will also be special interest walks, linked to special events, anniversaries, festivals.

So, if you are going on a visit do look out for guides with the blue and green badges and if there are local history events happening in your area, reach out to your local guide association to see how they can contribute. Guides often do talks as well as walks, and some will have blue badges and can take coach tours. If you volunteer at  local heritage site, church or similar Institute trainers are always happy to do workshops for staff and volunteers to improve communication skills – and you can get a national qualification as a bonus.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the British Association for Local History (BALH). Any content provided by our contributors is of their own opinion and is not intended to malign any individual, group, organisation, or entity.