Welcome Carly!

Our new Family Education Officer, Carly Smith-Huggins, joined us at the end of August and has already organised several events.  Here she is to tell us a bit more about herself and about how she got on with her first Under 5s event.  

Our new Family Education Officer! © Pitt Rivers Museum

"Hello, I have just joined the Pitt Rivers Education team as the Families Education Officer. I will be delivering all the family activities and workshops that happen in the museum including Pitt Stops and special sessions for under 5s. I am really excited about getting stuck in and creating activities and resources for all families to enjoy.

For the past 8 months I have been working as the Heritage Learning Assistant at the Museum of Oxford, which is based in the Town Hall. Whilst I was there I worked with families and schools, and adult community groups. I managed and delivered the family programme, delivering monthly family workshops about the stories of Oxford on a variety of topics from the Romans to the Tudors, as well as designing trails. I also worked with adult community groups to inspire them to produce artwork for an exhibition that is going to be opening this month in the Town Hall.

Before that I was a HLF Skills for the Future trainee working with the Oxford University Education departments to become a Museum Education Officer. I did three placements at the Ashmolean, Museum of the History of Science, and the Museum of Natural History.

I have been at the Pitt Rivers for four weeks now and have run three events so far; making masks, parrot fish lanterns, and sponge boats! This week I ran an event called Row, Row, Row your boat for under 5s. For this we made Sea Explorer Hats and Sponge Boats. I also took the children and their carers around the museum on a Row Boat Adventure Tour. On the tour we looked for boats in the museum finding out a bit more about a few of them. We could have spent all day looking for boats, as there are so many! We also spotted some hidden treasure under one of the museum cases… There was also a model of a Salama boat for children to play with and use their imaginations to pretend they were at sea.

Carly Rows out to Sea © Pitt Rivers Museum

I am really enjoying my new role at the Pitt Rivers Museum. I am looking forward to working with the Education team and discovering more about all the fascinating objects in the museum and handling collections. 

Look out for our next Under 5s event on Thursday 9th October 10.30-12.30, and 14.00-16.00 which is all about Animal Antics!  Come and see what animals you can track down in the Museum..."