Archive for the ‘The Museum of Me’ Category
And it’s goodbye from me…
Posted on: September 10, 2010
It’s with some sadness I write this post, but it’s time for me to move on to pastures new. I’ve enjoyed working with the Learning Teams at the Manchester Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery and with the many teachers and children who have visited and taken part in sessions and projects.
I have many memories of the 3 years I’ve been here – too many to spell out, so I’m going for the photo-montage approach. I hope you’ll imagine some suitably cheesy music playing over the top…
Image, heads down - planning how to display things in the museum
Image, sorting objects from the stores
image, Irit in the conservation lab
Image, touching an Egyptian object from the Museum stores
image, St James' notebooks - consultation work Feb 2010
image, Bryan - our Curator of Archaeology
Image, replica of the Kyrenia ship, formerly in the Mediterranean gallery
Image, Using an OOKL in The Manchester Museum
image, taking part in an archaeological dig
Guest blog: Purple Candles?
Posted on: March 24, 2010
Gavin Shortall is the Year 6 teacher at St James’ CE Primary School, Rusholme, which is our ‘school in residence’. I asked him to write a guest blog entry on how he feels our partnership benefits the children in his class:
Manchester Museum. Where to start? When I sit down to think about Manchester Museum, I find myself thinking of an old, big purple candle that I now use as a bookend on a shelf. I have had the thing for years and done nothing with it. Walked past it and it’s not even registered. Now I walk past it, as it sits there keeping my ever growing collection of books from spilling all over the floor, and wonder how I ever managed without it. I think about how no other object could do its job and I am thankful to whoever it was that gave me the thing those years ago.
Image, children are given their own notebooks and decide what to record
While I certainly wouldn’t want to set the Museum alight, I do however think of it in the same way as my candle. I have now been bringing a Year 6 class to the Museum for 2 years, working primarily with Neil, mainly as a way of stimulating writing. If you teach in Manchester (maybe if you teach in a primary school anywhere?) I am willing to bet that driving up writing standards is a focus for you. It certainly is for us. The Manchester Museum has been a great find for us in trying to do this.
Image, Karen Exell, our Curator of Egypt and the Sudan, shows an artefact to children
The specifics of what we have done are too many and detailed to go into here. I could talk about the day when we examined an ancient Crime Scene, using that to write a report. I could talk about the day we spent at the Museum looking at what goes on behind the scenes, using that to write a guide to the Museum. I could talk about the day we spent in the ‘Charles Darwin: evolution of a scientist’ exhibition, using that to look at how biographies can be constructed. I could even talk about the video that we wrote a script to, acted, directed and shot in situ, that is now used to promote the Museum’s partner, the Whitworth Art Gallery.
Image, touching an Egyptian object from the Museum stores
But for me as a teacher, it has been a little bit more than that. It has been about giving the children an exciting, tangible, real life context in which to write. As I gear myself up for whatever task this year’s SATs is going to throw my way, I worry that when they turn the paper over and find out that they have to write a recount of a trip to the seaside, too many of them will have no idea what such a trip would be like. I worry that too many of them won’t understand exactly what’s being asked of them. Not like when we are at the Museum. Having the opportunity to give the children vivid experiences to stimulate has been great. You can’t sum it up any better than one of the children who quite happily remarked after finishing one activity – “That was great! What are we doing next?”
And the Museum’s not even purple.
Shout it out from the rooftops!
Posted on: June 17, 2009
Well, maybe not the rooftops, but don’t you sometimes think it’s good to be able to tell other people about the good stuff?
The Manchester Museum is, as you may know, a part of the University of Manchester. What you might not know (and I certainly didn’t until recently) is that there are a surprising number of museums and galleries connected to universities around the country.
And, being birds of a feather, so to speak, they tend to enjoy the chance to flock together. In fact, there is a Universities Museum Group (UMG)… This is not a case of trying to be snooty, stand-offish or otherwise separate ourselves from other museums and galleries around the country. It’s quite simply the case that university museums and galleries are (in part) differently funded because of their university collections and generally also have a particular responsibility to be involved in and support research of all kinds.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, recently, representatives from the UMG met in Manchester to share news of their projects and developments. Amongst the grand building redesigns and virtual learning environments was yours truly flying the flag for our very own learning programmes. In particular, the wonderful TSI: Time Scene Investigation project which I co-ordinated earlier in the year.
Image, TSI: Time Scene Investigation
My presentation, whilst giving background information, focused mainly on photos, scans of drawings and writing from notebooks and even sounds snippets from the children involved. I think it was this last aspect that really spoke to the audience – giving the children a voice in that room really brought the project back to life and brought back for me just how much fun and how amazing our work with St James’ school really was.
Image, St James' Primary School, Rusholme
My visit to The Museum of Me
Posted on: February 18, 2009
I was invited to open a new museum recently – a great honour because no-one’s ever asked me to do anything like that before. It was at St James’ CE Primary School in Fallowfield, Manchester, and it’s called The Museum of Me. Year 5 and 6 children from the school have constructed their own museum in partnership with our learning team, working with an artist and a writer to develop creative responses to objects and exhibitions.
Image, the Museum of Me process
The focus for the project was Lindow Man: A Bog Body Mystery – our current temporary exhibition. The process went to and fro, with the children making research visits to the museum and staff and practitioners going out to school. Lindow Man is not a straightforward exhibition for children to engage with, but the work that our learning team has done with a range of ages shows that it can be done really successfully.
Image, personal item on display
The key theme that the St James’ children extracted from the exhibition was ‘time’, and they explored this complex and fascinating subject through discussion, object investigation, creative writing, sculpture and illustration. The children worked in teams to curate the museum, collecting objects from their homes, composing labels and interpretive panels, and creating artwork displays.
Image, hanging artworks
On arrival I was greeted by ‘Visitor Services Staff’ who gave me a VIP badge and escorted me through a private view of the exhibits. The children explained their museum and answered my questions with a fluency and conceptual sophistication that would be a credit to any of our institutions. No-one who had gathered for this official opening – parents, teachers and museum staff – could doubt the dedication, enthusiasm and creative learning that had gone into this latest addition to our cultural heritage.
Related Learning Team posts:
- TSI: Time Scene Investigation
- TSI: Time Scene Investigation (Part 2)
- TSI Part 3 (or this is where things *really* took off!)
- TSI Part 4 – The Museum of Me
- Helena’s visit to the Museum of Me
- Learning & Lindow Man
On Thursday 5th February St James CE in Rusholme held an amazing and life enhancing exhibition ‘The Museum of Me’ .
I walked into the Hall and Year 5 Classroom to find the place filled with the children’s own objects – their personal archives and a whole array of journals, notebooks, interactive displays and artwork. The whole project had been part of a research project to find out how Year 5 and Year 6 children could develop their ideas about time and the way collections (in particular archaeology collections) are displayed and interpreted.
Image, potion bottles
Two strands informed the work:
- Year 6 worked with Lead Educator Neil Green (see his blog entry) on the TSI: Time Scene Investigation strand, exploring stimuli for writing and encouraging research skills
- An arts-based project using the exhibition Lindow Man as a starting point. Working with two artists, Daksha Patel and Paul Pickford, the Year 5 children explored in depth notions of time and identity.
Image, a child's sketchbook
Making ‘The Museum of Me’ involved working with Leander Wolstenholme (Curator of Botany), Bryan Sitch (Curator of Archaeology) and Irit Narkiss (Conservator) at The Museum and developing ideas with the artists. This included making potions (Roman style!) with fresh herbs, designing and making pop up books and making clay plaques which kept the traces of each child’s special object.
The resulting show was a true ‘Festival of Learning’ and delighted the makers and audience alike. Parents and other classes in the school came along on Thursday to be shown around the exhibits by their children and colleagues. The material has been recorded as a complete photographic journal and this together with the rich selection of journals, labels and poetry will form a vitally important body of evidence to help our team at The Manchester Museum develop new ideas for the redisplay of our archaeology galleries.
Well done St James!
Image, an example of a clay artwork created during the project
Related Learning Team posts:
TSI Part 4 – The Museum of Me
Posted on: February 16, 2009
It seemed like a simple idea when Gavin (the class teacher) and I discussed it. Produce a class museum to pull together the elements of the TSI project. What I don’t think either of us realised was how much work it would take, but also how deeply the children would get into it and how much they would have learnt from the whole project…
Last week, the year 6s became curators of their own museum – collecting objects which were meaningful to them.
Image, An example display from the Museum of Me
During the course of one day, they wrote complex labels which included facts and opinions about their object (all written in complex, formal and technical language) along with a simpler version for their younger colleagues, and then organised the display of their objects and labels in the school hall. At the same time, the year 5s were organising their own gallery of the Museum of Me in their classroom.
Image, A second example display from the Museum of Me
During the afternoon, the children from both classes acted as guides to the museum, firstly for classes from Nursery to Year 4, and then for parents and a special visitor from Manchester Museum, who I know has written his own impressions…
The Museum of Me blew me away with the quality of thought that went into the labelling, the display and their explanations to visitors.
Image, An example of the quality of labelling
There’s a bit more of the project to come, but I can honestly say it’s been an honour to be involved with this project. We’ve all been learning along the way and it will take me a while to pull out everything I’ve gained from it.
Related Learning Team posts:
It’s amazing the number of elements that went into the next stage of the project.
But even more amazing what came out of it all…
The Year 6s from St James returned to the Manchester Museum a week after their first visit, with a really busy day planned for them.
First, the introduction of the Ookl phones: these are phones with software on which enables users to take photos, record sounds and comments, and write text comments – all of which are automatically uploaded to the Ookl website for later use. It’s no understatement to say that the children were extremely excited about being able to use this tool along side their TSI notebooks.
Image, An Ookl phone in use in the Mediterranean Archaeology gallery
Then we were off into a busy research day, including a carousel of diferent activities:
- Working with a curator to get up close to objects which are usually kept in the Museum stores and explore how they connected with their group’s over-arching cultural theme.
Thanks to Bryan Sitch for his great work!
Image, Bryan listens to an observation about the amphora
- Working a conservator to learn about how conservators preserve objects which come into the collection and how they ensure they displayed appropriately.
Thanks to Irit Narkiss for her invaluable support. - Critically examining the Mediterranean Archaeology gallery and Lindow Man exhibition for ideas on how objects are displayed, labelled and presented, including how facts, theories and opinions are part of this.
Image, A metal object - should it be conserved as it is or repaired and cleaned?
After all this hard work, and a chance to share ideas with other groups, each group created a poster to demonstrate how they would display their find from their dig the week before.
The next step was a visit from me to the school to show the children how to access the images, text and recordings uploaded to their Ookl account and how they can make simple presentations from them. I was very impressed that one member of the class had already googled Ookl, logged in and started to use it.
The following day the children visited me again – this time in my other place of work: the Whitworth Art Gallery. There we spent some time developing our ideas about display. An art gallery and a museum may not always appear to have much in common, but the children were able to draw some interesting parallels and differences between the two venues.
Moving on to last week was when the TSI project began to merge with the Year 5 Lindow Man-related project that my colleague Helena and various artists have been working on and resulted in the two year groups producing their own take on the idea of a ‘Museum of Me’…
Related Learning Team posts:
Image, Items used for Time Scene Investigation
Wow! And double wow. And general comments which make me sound more like an excitable child (second childhood perhaps?)
I’m talking about the TSI: Time Scene Investigation project I’ve been privileged to organise and be part of with St James Primary School in Rusholme. It’s not quite over yet – and there’s still some reflection for us all to do, but I admit to having been blown away by what’s happened so far.
The project, as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, centred around these aims:
- how children act as researchers
- how working in a museum and with museum professionals can influence and give context to writing
- gathering children’s impressions and ideas of archaeological display as part of the Museum’s Archaeology/Egypt re-display consultation process
We’ve explored these aims and much more over the last few weeks.
We started our learning journey together with me visiting the school to begin explore the idea of archaeologists as ‘time detectives’, through gathering evidence from modern rubbish and mind-mapping things our cultures would leave behind for future archaeologists, under the headings:
- Homes
- Clothes, Shoes and Jewellery
- Food and drink
- A Typical Day (work/school/spare time)
Image, Students working on their archaeological dig
We also began to explore some of the issues surrounding the human remains debate in a ‘mind game’ which looked at the imaginary death of a member of the class, what grave goods we would send him on his way with and how we would feel if, in eighty years time, his body was dug up and it was suggested he be displayed in the Museum.
This lead into a very interesting ‘polarisation debate’ (where participants move to the side they agree with and each side attempts to persuade the other of their point of view). This, in its turn was a great way into encouraging the children to make notes in their project notebooks and then draft a balanced argument. Challenging stuff – and I was very impressed with the maturity of the arguments both sides expressed.
The following week the class made its first visit to The Manchester Museum. In a busy, thoughtful day, we first visited the Egypt afterlife gallery to explore how the people there had once been like us and to offer them grave goods from the collection. A visit to the money gallery, helped explore another type of object sometimes found at archaeological digs (and I still love the coin which doubles as a knife) before using chosen coins to help us understand stratification and how money can help us date other archaeological finds. The morning concluded with a full-on sand dig (complete with appropriate Health and Safety instructions!).
The Egypt daily life gallery helped us consider how labels in museums can deal with both fact and opinion, before we moved to the ‘finds shed’ to record some detailed information: facts and opinions about our finds, along with careful, labelled drawings – recording the ‘evidence’ from the ‘time scene’.
The following day, I visited the school to work with the class on how to write up a report on their find for the TSI chief inspector. The children again enjoyed creating writing with a real context to it.
The next week was when the project began to really fly. But that’s for another blog entry…
Image, Students cleaning their archaeological finds
Related Learning Team posts:
TSI: Time Scene Investigation
Posted on: January 19, 2009
Image, Archaeological sand dig
We’re very privileged in the Manchester Museum to be able to experiment, evaluate and reflect on what we do as a Learning Team. In the coming few weeks, I’ll be ‘experimenting’ with a group of children from St James Primary in Rusholme. I first met and worked with them a year ago when they became part of a film we produced exploring children’s different responses to choosing and handling objects from our Mediterranean collection (amongst other things).
This year, we’re involving them in a longer project which will involve two days working in the Museum as well as several workshops with me in school. During the project (TSI: Time Scene Investigation), the children will take part in a process that leads them from the role of archaeologist discovering artefacts and part of objects ‘in the field’ through the role of conservator and curator (including some trips behind the scenes in the Museum) to how objects are displayed. The project focuses on elements such as:
- how children act as researchers
- how working in a museum and with museum professionals can influence and give context to writing
- gathering children’s impressions and ideas of archaeological display as part of the Museum’s Archaeology/Egypt re-display consultation process
The children will also get to use Ookl phones to help them collect photographic, textual and spoken reflections – these will be used as part of their final group presentations. The final outcome will be a school-based ‘Museum of Me’ which the children will produce themselves, for their schoolmates, teachers and community.
Almost all the pieces of the planning are now in place and I can honestly say I’m really looking forward to this project! Watch this space for news on how it progresses.
Related Learning Team posts:
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