Category Archives: Education

Museum handling objects

We have made a range of items for museum handling collections. These have been made to show ancient crafts and creative techniques. Being able to hold and use something can really bring archaeological artefacts to life for students. They can also represent the mass of organic objects which haven’t survived, to supplement museum objects. The objects are resiliant enough to be used and handled by groups, and being modern, are easily replaceable.

 

For Wallingford Museum we have supplied hand-made ceramic-weighted spindles. These will be a part of their handling collection for school visits and other groups. The spindles are very similar to some archaeological examples which the museum has on display.

 

 

 

For the Ashmolean Museum we have suppied a range of items for their new Bronze Age education sessions.

For their handling collection: Birch bark containers, lime bark cordage and nettle cordage.

For an activity or demonstration: the base plate and willow withys for wattle weaving.

For the Pitt Rivers Museum, we have supplied a range of natural dyestuffs and dyed cloth for a matching game, part of an education session on light and colour. This is part of the Need Make Use / VERVE project at the Pitt Rivers.

Dyes and Pigments matching game for the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The Salisbury Museum – Living History Fortnight (Newspaper article)

Another delightful week at Salisbury Museum. We have created a new partnerships with Ancient Music, so alongside them, we varied the activities from last year. The schools got to experience a wider range of anient crafts than ever before: Fire-lighting, spear-throwing, natural dyeing, natural paint-making, using quern stones to grind wheat, spinning wool, weaving and experiencing the fantastic Wessex Gallery of the museum. Over the week we worked with 5 classes, both primary schools and a group of college students with special educational needs.

An article about our work at the Stone Age living history week appeared in the Salisbury Journal.

Many thanks to Salisbury Museum for hosting us and ensuring the sessions ran so smoothly.

www.salisburymuseum.org.uk

Silchester Excavation Open Days

It was an honour to be invited to the last Silchester excavation open days. This Roman and Prehistoric excavation is a fantastic place for us to show some of the textile production techniques available to those people. We brought back the warp-weighted loom which we built for this event last year, and the students were very appreciative of an example of how the archaeology they were finding would have been used. We also modelled our new loom weights on finds from Silchester and Salisbury Museum.

Also many thanks to Kevin Standage Photograhy for giving us use of photos from his Silchester series.

www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/visit-the-roman-town/sil-visit-silchester-roman-town

Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Living History Week

Our first week-long event! It was very hot all week, and the tents which we brought in case of rain were used for shade instead. We were showing the story of cloth and teaching practical fibrecraft skills to primary school groups (years 3 to 6), a college group and a group of “the stitchers”, who volunteer for the museum making childrens costumes. A highlight of our experience was to be able to work with such a great group of museum volunteers over the week, who looked after the schools very well indeed, and helped our busy days run smoothly.

On the afternoon of the first day, we were given a sheep, which has been in one of the museum galleries for about 20 years, and they wanted to get rid of her! We’ve named her Gladys. She was very useful explaining to children where wool comes from, and we’ll do our best to give her a good home.

It was also great for the visitors to be there for so long, as we had time to set up some of the more complicated secondary coloured dyestuffs, which the groups visiting on Thursday and Friday really appreciated.

We were helping to give schoolchildren sneak peeks of the new Archaeology of Wessex Gallery.

http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/

Ufton Court: Willow Longship

We’ve been asked to help Ufton Court design a prehistoric village for their Education department, to help them deliver the new Primary History curriculum, which focuses significantly more on prehistory than previously.

On a gloriously sunny spring day, we planted a living willow Viking longship as part of their new archaeological village. Soon there will be also an Iron Age roundhouse and a Saxon house for school groups to use too. Look out Saxons, there may be some Viking invasions!

http://www.uftoncourt.co.uk/