West Oxford School find out about Nigeria in Take One... Country

The country selected by West Oxford Community Primary School for the focus of their annual Take One project was Nigeria and what better place to come to than the Pitt Rivers Museum? Over two weeks every class from Reception to Year 6 visited the Pitt Rivers Museum to handle and look at Nigerian artefacts.  These visits inspired art and craft work which culminated in the summer art exhibition open to parents and the local community.  I was lucky enough to visit this fabulous exhibition at the start of July and was overwhelmed by the creative, colourful and diverse responses to the Nigerian collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Take One.. Country Exhibition at West Oxford Primary School © Pitt Rivers Museum

During their 90 minute visit to the Pitt Rivers pupils looked closely at Nigerian masks, exploring the concept of masquerade where there is an attempt to make contact with village ancestors through costumed dance and song. They also had a chance to handle and test out talking drums, dance anklets and masks. To find out more about masquerades read our West Africa Masks and Carving Factsheet or visit our fabulous displays!  Pupils also looked at ways status can be conveyed through looking closely at the Benin Court Art display as the Kingdom of Benin is in southern Nigeria.  They discovered that a leopard is a sign of royal power and that in the seventeenth century the Oba (King) walked tame leopards round the city on a lead!

Leopard Brass Mask 1965.9.1 B © Pitt Rivers Museum

Year 6 Clay Leopard Mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

A self-guided trail around the Pitt Rivers also enabled pupils to discover the wide range of arts and crafts generated within Nigeria.  Pupils loved tracking down the objects, highlighted with a Nigerian flag sticker, and saw fabulous objects such as leather riding boots made by the Hausa people from Northern Nigeria or beaded fans made by Yoruba artists in Western Nigeria.  Pupils also looked at a Yoruba wooden sculpture of Queen Victoria, touching on the colonial history of Nigeria.

Hausa Riding Boots 1904.54.24.1
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Yoruba Beaded Fan 1965.12.45 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Pupils used what they had seen as a creative springboard to produce a wide range of art and craft work ranging from beaded fans, masquerade masks, tie-dye T-shirts, fabric designs, embroidered animals to leopard sculptures!  This encapsulates the approach of the National Gallery's Take One... brand which encourages schools to take one picture or object, and use it to foster pupils' critical and creative thinking. West Oxford Community Primary School have enterprisingly extended this concept to include Take One Country, focussing on India at The Ashmolean last year and now Nigeria at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  I'm looking forward to finding out where we might be travelling to next year!

Beaded Fan made by Reception pupil © Pitt Rivers Museum

Tie dye T-shirt inspired by indigo dyed Adire Cloth © Pitt Rivers Museum

Leopard Sculptures inspired by a Yoruba Leopard Box 1919.10.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

If you would like to find out more about the project, develop you own Take One experience or book existing Take One sessions then please contact rebecca.mcvean@prm.ox.ac.uk
Staff INSET can be delivered as part of project work.

If you are studying Benin or are interested in finding out more about the masquerade masks then consider booking our Guided trail - Africa, highlighting Benin.

As you can see the stimulus of the collections here produce some amazing creative results!  As a teacher from West Oxford Primary School stated:
"This was a class act - well presented, great resources and good communication beforehand.  Great balance - pupils were able to touch and hold objects, discuss, listen, look at cabinets.'

Becca McVean
Primary School Education Officer
Pitt Rivers Museum

Work Experience Placement at the Museum

Every year the Education team facilitates a certain number of work experience placements to enable young people to find out about work in a museum. Here a local student , Jasmine (15), reports on what she got up to during a week at Pitt Rivers...


"This last week I've been immersed in a different world. I am a GCSE history student, and arranged with the Pitt Rivers Museum to do work experience with them for a week.

"I particularly enjoyed photographing the Education Department's handling collection of textiles and masks. We were creating a database, so that researchers could search for and find objects. There were some fascinating and quirky masks, like these two from Indonesia (below):

Frog mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

Bird Mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

If the experience at the Pitt Rivers taught me anything, it's the power of objects. Looking at an object can tell you tons about the people who made it.

African Mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

African mask © Pitt Rivers Museum

 










"These two African masks (above) tell us about standards of beauty in parts of Africa. Just as we tattoo ourselves, these people cut into their skin and place inks into the cuts, leaving colourful scars behind. See in the scars on the forehead of the mask above. These were considered beautiful, and were a way of showing you were from a particular tribe. Elongated foreheads were a sign of class and beauty in Africa. As babies, our skull bones haven't fused together; so people can safely change the shape of the head.

"Preserving these fabrics can be very important too. The Pitt Rivers is sometimes used to help bring back arts that have died out. If particular weaving techniques have been forgotten, photos of these scarves could be very helpful.

Woven textile © Pitt Rivers Museum

Photographing the Education handling collection 
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Preparing objects to photograph 
© Pitt Rivers Museum

"But a great thing about the Pitt Rivers is how varied it can be. While my friend doing work experience in a bakery did the same thing every day, I had different jobs, almost every day. From opening the museum, to helping with crafts for primary school workshops, to writing this very blog post, my time at the Pitt Rivers Museum has been unforgettable."

Jasmine, work experience student, March 2016