With the support of a Young Roots grant from the Heritage Lottery
Fund, the Pitt Rivers has also been working with local teenagers of
African origin on a video project, Flashback: African Contributions in Perspective.
As part of the project, the young people visited the museum, attended
weekly sessions at East Oxford Community Centre to learn video skills,
explored African culture through workshops on music, art and dance, and
undertook interviews with positive role models. The teenagers performed
at the museum’s late-night opening in May and have used their
experiences to produce a film resource that will help to inform local
schoolchildren about African culture.
In October 2006, the
Ashmolean Museum worked in partnership with local libraries for the
Campaign for Learning’s Family Learning weeks, which encourage adult
participation and learning through their children. Participants used
recycled materials from the Orinoco Scrap store to make Anglo-Saxon
artefacts. The museum also ran four Greeks on Tour outreach
sessions in Oxfordshire schools. These sessions gave nearly 400
children the chance to handle authentic Greek artefacts and learn about
life in Ancient Greece.
Using their example of the Indonesian
musical instrument, now housed at the Pitt Rivers, the Bate Collection
recently organised hands-on Javanese gamelan workshops. They have also
been running weekly gamelan workshops at St Andrew’s Primary School in
Oxford. This was so successful that in June this group joined
inter-nationally renowned gamelan musician and composer Dr Rahayu
Supanggah and 24 other gamelan ensembles from across the UK in a
performance at the opening of the new Royal Festival Hall.
The Museum of the History of Science collaborated with artist Katy Beinart on Parallel Worlds,
a project supported by the Arts Council which looked at the different
cultural worlds encompassed by the City of Oxford. The museum’s role
was to provide a context for participants to explore an aspect of the
University world of learning by undertaking activities in the museum
involving objects such as the camera obscura and telescope. The
photographs and other artwork that participants created in response to
the project subsequently formed part of an exhibition in a central
Oxford gallery.
Children imagining the faces of ‘tree spirits’ at Harcourt Arboretum during one of the many hands-on events for families that were organised by the University's museums' outreach teams in 2006–7.
The
Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum annually engages with more than
10,000 children between them, mostly through programmes for schools.
While the Botanic Garden has the glasshouses and other indoor
facilities to make the most of bad weather, the Arboretum uses the
traditionally quiet months between January and March to run outreach
sessions targeting primary schools that have not previously been
involved in the education programmes they run. In the first three
months of 2007, Kate Castleden, Education and Outreach Officer at the
Harcourt Arboretum, visited 21 new schools and presented sessions to
1,593 children who might not otherwise have had the chance to
experience what the collection has to offer. ‘The children love object
handling, especially items they have never seen before, like the coco
de mer seed (the biggest seed in the world),’ she explained. ‘Talking
about the importance of trees and plants in an accessible and fun
context is the starting point. This fires the children’s imaginations,
and increases their enthusiasm and anticipation for a follow-up visit
to the Arboretum to see some of the trees and plants we have discussed.'
Last summer, the Botanic Garden attracted around 1,000 people a day
to its Saturday picnics. The events were advertised as picnics in order
to attract people who might not normally think of using the gardens as
a fun, recreational space. As well as music, performances and
storytelling activities, there were informal tours of the gardens
introducing visitors to the content and variety of the collections,
including its history and significance. ‘We recognise that everyone has
different ways of approaching the collections and we want people to
know that these are all valid. We also want to encourage people to use
the space, the buildings and the settings, as well as the collections
they hold’, explained Emma Williams, Education Officer. The feedback
from sessions across the museums confirms the positive impact of these
new experiences: ‘Thank you for a fantastic day and I hope we can all
come again very soon’ (Year 3 pupil). ‘Everyone really enjoyed [the
session] so thanks very much indeed! We’d love you to come again;
they’re really fired up about the textile ideas!’ (a Family Learning
Tutor following an object handling session with adult learners).
Going
forward, the museums continue to find new ways to develop and diversify
the impressive range of services that they offer. As part of the
Oxfordshire 2007 celebrations, the museums are involved in several
schemes, including
Faces of Oxfordshire, a series of
exhibitions, activities and events celebrating the millions of people
who have lived and worked in the county over the past 1,000 years. They
have also teamed up on
Behind the Façade, a project which has
given groups who find it difficult to access the collections the chance
to come to the museums, meet the staff and find out what goes on behind
the scenes. The Ashmolean is also working with a group of vulnerable
adults, the Natural History Museum with adults with visual impairments,
the Pitt Rivers with people with physical disabilities and the Museum
of the History of Science with a group of adults with learning
difficulties. The participants will create artwork based on their
experiences which is on display in the Pitt Rivers and the Museum of
Natural History until 25 February 2008.
