Littlemore Playday

Here's our Family Education Officer, Simone Dogherty, explaining what she got up to at Littlemore Playday in the rain!

"On the morning of Saturday 28^th June, I could be found wheeling an exciting trolley full of exciting objects to Littlemore Recreation Ground for a fab day of outreach.

My job here at the Pitt Rivers is to arrange events and activities for families in the Museum. Therefore, I love the chance every now and then to get out and meet families where they may not necessarily expect to see museum objects!

We have an absolutely fantastic Outreach team –Susan Griffiths and Nicola Bird – who work across the Oxford University Museums and Collections and deliver fantastic sessions to a whole range of community and school groups. So it was on their behalf that I headed out to Littlemore Recreation ground to take part in one of the brilliant Oxfordshire Play Association’s Play Days.

Not long after I had set up the gazebo did the heavens open! Luckily for us, we still had a great number of determined families pop by and check out mystery objects from across the museums’ collections.

Simone shelters from the rain! ©Pitt Rivers Museum

From the Pitt Rivers we had brought a Kenyan Milk Bottle (great for all the senses!), a Chinese Tea Brick and a Tibetan Fire Striker. Add this to plenty of other objects from the Ashmolean, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Museum of the History of Science and the Botanic Garden and Arboretum as well, and we were a very popular stall indeed! Families enjoyed working out what the mystery objects could be, and working together as a team to come up with the answers. They could even take away some craft activities and colouring sheets, along with some information about our upcoming activities.

Despite the rain, it was a great way to spend the afternoon, meeting lots of families who will be sure to be museum experts when they visit the collections!"