Kick Arts Exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum

In Spring 2017 the Pitt Rivers Museum was proud to present the Kick Arts exhibition. Kick Arts is a model of working which allows young people working outside mainstream education to engage with the Arts.

The exhibition was a presentation of the work of eight young people who have been spending one day a week at the Museum since November. They explored the Museum, hunted for inspiration, developed their creative skills and confidence, and discovered new artistic talents they didn't know they had.  Each young person developed their own project, and had their own display of work as part of the exhibition.  The exhibition also comprised of a pop-up collaborative installation on the balcony of the Pitt Rivers Museum, inspired by the Ancient Egyptian coffin, canonic jars and mummies in the Pitt Rivers collection.  The sculptures were made from withy and painted papermache, and the textiles have been created using the wax-resist technique of dying fabric called batik.

The workshops were led by Charlie Henry from OYAP Trust, working with young leaders with a range of arts skills. The programme is part of a Young Roots partnership project between the Pitt Rivers Museum and OYAP Trust, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The young people worked in a variety of creative media, from poetry to rapping, photography, sculpture, film-making and painting. They have all successfully completed a Bronze or Silver Arts Award as part of the project.

We are extremely impressed with the quality of the work from all the young people, as well as their commitment to finishing their work, producing a public exhibition and their Arts Award portfolios. We have loved seeing our collections through new eyes thanks to their creative perspectives! A big thanks and well done to all.

Katherine Rose

Education Officer (Secondary and Young People)

Pitt Rivers Museum

Pop-up Pitt Rivers

The Pitt Rivers outreach programme is part of the Need / Make / Use project. Between 2013 and 2017 we are taking the Pitt-Rivers ‘experience’ to events, fetes and festivals in and around Oxfordshire. Our aim is to reach out to communities that may not have had the opportunity to visit the Museum, so they can engage with the collections in new ways through handling museum objects, craft activities and workshops.

So far in 2015 we’ve been lucky enough to attend Abingdon Fun in the Park in the Abbey Grounds and Florence Park Festival in June and Salisbury’s Festival of Archaeology in July.

Pitt Rivers pop-up tent at Abingdon's Fun in the Park in June © Pitt Rivers Museum

Inside our beautifully decorated tent we have a selection of intriguing museum handling objects on display from around the world to spark people’s curiosity and encourage conversation. The great thing about museum handling objects is that people can pick them up, feel the materials and even give them a sniff!

One of our favourite ‘smelling’ objects is this Kenyan milk gourd, made from a calabash (a type of vegetable), which has been cleaned and dried in the sun until it becomes hard and watertight. Its distinctive smell comes from a blend of milk, cows blood and ash, providing the local Maasai herdsmen with their staple food and all their protein and caloric needs in a convenient portable ‘lunchbox’. These gourds were treasured, mended when broken and used for many years.

Kenyan Maasai gourd from the education handling collection © Pitt Rivers Museum

As always our pop-up tent also features a selection of free family friendly craft activities relating to the museum’s collections and some of the handling objects on display. This summer we’ve had fun making porcupine fish helmets, fish scale breastplates, mini Zulu shields, feather headdresses, drum shakers and more!

 Porcupine fish helmet activity & replica porcupine
fish helmet from the education handling collection. © Pitt Rivers Museum

At Salisbury Festival of archaeology, emulating a fish-scale
breastplate from Sarawak © Pitt Rivers Museum

Children wearing their porcupine fish helmets, 
and pretending to be one! © Pitt Rivers Museum

This August, look out for our tent in Witney’s Marriotts Walk shopping centre (Wed 19th) and the next Oxfordshire Play Day event in Wallingford (Wednesday 12th)!

Welcome!

Welcome to our new Education Blog! We will use this space to let you know about the diverse activities we run for lots of different audiences.
 A good starting place must be introducing the team, so here goes:

Left to right: Salma Caller, Andy McLellan, Simone Dogherty,
Maya Herbolzheimer, Shirley Careford, Becca McVean
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Andy McLellan, Head of Education, leads the department, provides the vision, and goes to lots of meetings. He is particularly interested in film projects and has worked with teenagers in care, schools and community groups. He arrived at the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2000 to start up the Education Team, which now encompasses seven staff.

There are Education Officers for different audience groups. Salma Caller works with Adults, Secondary Schools and Communities. She draws on her background as an artist and having travelled widely to help interpret objects to this wide range of audiences. Becca McVean works with Primary Schools, utilising her skills as a trained English teacher, and Simone Dogherty enchants families with her cheerful smile and demon design skills.

We are lucky enough to have a Music Education Officer, Isabelle Carré, who delivers specialist projects and workshops and can often be seen playing giant African xylophones, Indonesian gamelans or Korean drums.

Isabelle Carré introduces primary school pupils to giant
Ugandan xylophone in the African Music session © Pitt Rivers Museum

Maya Herbolzheimer is the only full-time member of the Education Team and works as an Activities and Outreach officer for the HLF-funded VERVE: Need Make Use project. She organises outreach activities in the ‘pop-up’ Pitt Rivers tent around Oxfordshire, and runs events in the Museum such as workshops, demonstrations and evening events for adult audiences.

Our long-suffering Joint Bookings Officer, Shirley Careford, co-ordinates visitor bookings across the Oxford UniversityMuseum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers, and manages the Visitor Centre. She’ll always try to sort out your problem but cross her at your peril, particularly when Tottenham Hotspur has lost.

So now the niceties of introductions are over, you’ll be hearing from us over the next few months. From the daily grind to the sublime heights of project work. Keep reading…