Out and In, Around and About - Activities and Outreach Summer Highlights

My name is Beth and I am the new VERVE Outreach and Activities Officer. Since joining the Museum’s VERVE team in April I have met many hundreds of wonderful people participating in and collaborating with Pitt Rivers activities. Here are some of the highlights so far:

Around the World in Our Treasures
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Meet Me at the Museum

Meet Me at the Museum is a collaborative project with older people and those living with Dementia. Over the last six months our team of older people have met monthly with Charlie, a Flourish artist funded by Creative Dementia Arts Network and Helen Fountain, the Oxford Museums’ Reminiscence Officer, and worked towards creating a temporary case exhibition called Around the World in Our Treasures. Each month we all learnt new things. We navigated the museum with object tours, handled objects from the Pitt Rivers Education Handling Collection, tested out our creativity on short stop-animation films, and chatted over tea and biscuits.

Object Handling © CDAN

Museum Tour  © CDAN

Tents on Tour

On July the VERVE and Education Team have been out and about popping up at festivals, fêtes and carnivals and sharing the museum and its (handling!) objects with our local audiences. First stop was Flofest in Florence Park on 25 June, a day of warm sunshine and welly boots. Check out our short film of the event.

We then visited Bayards Hill Primary School as part of their School Fete and bopped to Bayards Got Talent while creating our very own stop-motion with the school’s families.

Final stop, Cowley Road Carnival on 10 July. The Pitt Rivers Tent was organised by Carly, our fantastic Families Officer, and supported by our joint museum volunteers. We had families making their own puppets from the Ramayana story, and badges inspired by museum objects pressed in the perfect early summer sun. 

Woodland Way Workshops

Working with Danny and Joe from Woodland Ways has been a great way of understanding our collection through making. July saw our first workshop with Woodland Ways on Bone flute making, which involved a lot of puffed-up faces and high-pitched sounds as our workshop attendees blew their newly made flutes. Joe specialises in making these flutes and spoke eloquently about their early history and gave top tips on the importance of selecting the right bone for the job. 

Joe from Woodland Ways  © Pitt Rivers Museum

The Bone flute Band  ©Pitt Rivers Museum

Family tour guide training: Summer holiday tours

This month we have been busy training up a group of Museum volunteers to become Family Tour Guides at the Museum. Five volunteers will be running a set of tours, designed especially for families, on Fridays during the summer holidays. This is a pilot project and we are hoping these summer tours are popular so that they continue as a regular weekend offer for families visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum.

To prepare the volunteers to guide families through the Museum and tell them more about the fascinating stories behind the objects, myself and Caroline Moreau from the Volunteers Service ran an interesting, and hopefully not too challenging, training session! During the session the volunteers took part in various activities including charades and asking lots of questions about Museum objects. During charades volunteers were asked to act out a museum object, trying to get the others to guess which Pitt Rivers Museum object they were. This included what the object was, what it was made from, and where in the world it was from.

Volunteers playing Museum Object Charades © Pitt Rivers Museum

Volunteers were also given mystery objects and were asked to write down as many questions that they could possibly ask about the object. It helped that they had no idea what the object was so would ask the most basic questions that perhaps visitors who may never have seen it might ask. This helps the volunteers to understand viewing an object from a visitors point of view. 

Volunteers asking lots of questions about a mystery object © Pitt Rivers Museum

Volunteers were also asked to lead each other around the Museum whilst one of them either partially closed their eyes or looked at the floor. The point if this exercise was to encourage the volunteers to think about how they might guide families around the Museum using just their words. This included guiding people around the physical space and also considering how to describe an object to a large group of people where some people might not be able to see the object on display.

Leading the way: One volunteer leads the other around the Museum
 © Pitt Rivers Museum

During the tours, volunteers will lead families around the Museum to look at five objects from around the world. Families will get the opportunity to see some of our lesser known objects and be able to ask the volunteers lots of questions about them. At the moment, they are working hard, reading up about all the objects and getting ready for the tours which start on Friday 29th July. Come along this summer to meet our great Family Tour Guides.

Carly Smith-Huggins
Families Education Officer 

Explaining a bit more about the five tour objects to the volunteers © Pitt Rivers Museum

Take One.. Tahitian Mourner's Costume

Take One.. Mourner's Costume is a new primary school project which has been launched at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  It is part of the National Gallery's Take One... brand which encourages schools to take one picture or object, and use it as a springboard for pupils' critical and creative thinking.  Pupils are challenged to take a close look at the spectacular Mourner's Costume collected on Captain Cook's Second Voyage of the Pacific (1772-75).


Mourner's Costume 1886.1.1637.2.1© Pitt Rivers Museum

During the 75 minute taught session pupils explore the different components of the Costume, examine the materials used and find out the fascinating story of how it was collected.  They are given the opportunity to look at other artefacts collected on Cook's Pacific Voyages, focusing on the patterns, and use their research to design their own celebratory costume.


Pupils present their costume design © Pitt Rivers Museum

After the initial stimulus, schools can develop their own response to the object with explorers, costumes and ceremonies, and materials being key lines of enquiry.  Teaching Notes available here. Take One... encourages a whole school celebratory event as demonstrated by West Oxford Community Primary School who used an art exhibition open to parents and the local community this week to showcase their response to the project.  This was the culmination of every year group visiting the Museum in June to experience a Take One... session.



Replica Mourner Costume © Pitt Rivers Museum

When I walked into the school hall at West Oxford Community Primary School I came face to face with a life-size replica of the Mourner Costume.  I loved the way shiny paper had been used to resemble the pearl oyster apron, buttons imitated discs of coconut shell and crepe paper stood in for the barkcloth cape. This had been the masterpiece of Year 1, co-ordinated by Senior Teacher Liz Newman.  I was also very excited to see the cloak designed by the Reception Class, ingeniously made from dyed wet-wipes.  I was warned not to smell too closely as they had used potent dyes ranging from coffee, turmeric, tea and beetroot.  They had wanted to use natural dyes in the same way that the Tahitians had done when creating their barkcloth.



Cloak made by Reception class © Pitt Rivers Museum

I really enjoyed finding out the different directions classes had taken the project in.  Some groups had immersed themselves in the life of Captain Cook, plotted his journeys of the Pacific, designed his boats and written detailed diary entries. 



Captain Cook's Pacific Voyages © Pitt Rivers Museum

Some classes had developed their work on patterns and experimented with different methods of printmaking.



Print patterns inspired by barkcloth © Pitt Rivers Museum



Print patterns inspired by barkcloth © Pitt Rivers Museum

There are definitely some talented costume designers at West Oxford Community Primary School, as seen in the picture below captioned 'Party Time'.  I particularly liked the design where confetti could be released from the knee-caps of a costume.



Celebratory Costume Design © Pitt Rivers Museum

If you would like to find out more about the project, book Take One sessions or organise teacher INSET then please contact me at education@prm.ox.ac.uk.

Becca McVean
Primary School Education Officer
Pitt Rivers Museum

 

Bookfeast Festival 2016

For the sixth year running the Bookfeast Schools Festival was hosted by the Pitt Rivers Museum, alongside The Story Museum, the Weston Library, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the North Wall.  Over 1,800 pupils from 22 Oxfordshire primary schools had the opportunity to meet authors, illustrators or poets.

Adam and Charlotte Guillain look inside George's bag © Pitt Rivers Museum

At the Pitt Rivers husband and wife team Adam and Charlotte Guillain entertained Key Stage 1 pupils with George's latest Amazing Adventure.  Colourful puppets, glorious props and funky guitar music were all used to tell George's story Pizza for Pirates.  Pupils then got to try out their own air guitar playing as they rapped through George's rhyming romp Treats for a T. Rex.

Meanwhile Cas Lester captivated Year 3 pupils with her tales of Nixie the bad, bad fairy and all her inventions.  She challenged the children to vote for the silliest inventions featuring knitted beards, glue stick butter for toast and shoe umbrellas.  Pupils also got to quiz the author about key issues such as what happens if you are stuck for ideas or if you keep on putting off writing...

Cas Lester and ridiculous inventions © Pitt Rivers Museum

Audiences were also wowed by Atinuke, a traditional oral Nigerian storyteller.  Children asked why she told her stories barefoot.  She explained that it makes her feel more comfortable. These opportunities to ask author direct questions are invaluable for children as they give insight into the creative process.   Sarah Courtauld, author of the Buckle and Squash books, facilitated a whole group creative writing session which demonstrated the choices authors make when crafting a story.

Sarah Courtauld signing books © Pitt Rivers Museum

After the author event children could do creative trails in The Pitt Rivers.  They explored the key features of quests and were then challenged to become great explorers on their own quest around the Museum.  The children proved themselves to be great plot creators on their expeditions showing that, as ever, this Museum is a creative space to be!

Becca McVean
Primary School Education Officer