Experience Castleford Forum Museum

Hi my name is Danielle. I am the front of house staff at Castleford Forum Museum. I have been in the post for 4 months now and I am really enjoying it! The job includes meeting and greeting the visitors, ensuring the museum is clean and tidy and collections are looked after - but my biggest aim is to ensure all visitors get the most out of their visit. 

In the museum we hold drop-in sessions inspired by the collections we have on display in the museum during the school holidays. These are open to everyone. It’s great to get involved with the community and provide different activities to ensure everyone gets the best out of the museum and can understand their local heritage.

Mugs painted in a drop-in session in Castleford Museum - inspired by the Castleford Pottery on display

It is fantastic to have local schools in the museum that can learn from their own heritage with it being on their door step. We offer lots of different workshops and self-led sessions to the schools.

Roman comb

I have recently been involved in a school visit from Castleford Park Juniors Academy. Year 3s came to Castleford Forum Museum for a self-led session. They were about 50 children on each day. The topic the children were most interested in was the Romans. The children looked around the Roman displays and the rest of the Museum before coming around the activity table for question time with our curator, Dave Evans and me. The children really got involved and wanted to know lots about the Romans.

Roman tile with a dog paw-print!

After the question time was up, the children were split into two groups. One group to see the Henry Moore display downstairs and the rest to do the activities I had developed, before swapping over. 

I showed the pupils the objects from the worksheets, and helped them find the words around the museum for the Roman crossword I had created for them. This challenged and developed me; I read through and made notes from the Roman Castleford books and resources, I wanted to learn anything I felt might come up in the session. I learnt about all the collections in the Museum so I could be most helpful on the days for the children. 

The children learnt a lot, and the teacher from Park Junior School told me “the children from Monday’s session are still going on about it and how much they enjoyed it.” 

It was great to watch and help the children in something I had created for them. Overseeing the visit was a new and great experience for me as a front of house staff; I learnt something new and spent half the day talking and answering questions with the children and staff.

There are lots of drop-in sessions coming up in Castleford. Why not pop in and get involved?

Flags, Badges and Paper Chains!

Saturday 2 May  

11am – 2pm

Castleford Forum Museum

Suitable for all

Take inspiration from the Jack Hulme images of celebration to create badges and flags ready for the big race!
Free, no need to book

Mosaic Coasters

Tuesday 26 May

11am – 2pm
Castleford Forum Museum

Suitable for all!

Make a mosaic coaster with ceramic tesserae (or paper for younger participants). 

Free, no need to book

Brilliant Boats

Thursday 28 May
10am - 12.00 noon
Castleford Forum Museum
Design and create your own mini model boat!

Suitable for all!
Free - no need to book


Henry Moore Tiles 
Friday 29 May
11am – 2pm 
Castleford Forum Museum
Find out about Henry Moore and his artistic style, and use it as inspiration to decorate a ceramic tile/coaster.
Suitable for all!
Free - no need to book 

Henry Moore Sculptures
Saturday  30 May
11am – 2pm 
Castleford Forum Museum
Be inspired by the community case created by St Joseph's School and create your own Henry Moore sculpture from clay. 
Suitable for all!
Free, no need to book

Museum Musings

Notes from Front of House - by Alyson

It is an exciting time to be starting my new post at Front of House; there is a great deal to enjoy, from the colourful stories retold by the local characters, to working with new objects and exhibitions. 

Thoughts on the new exhibition flit through my head on the way to work. The Call to Arms posters are framed and displayed and I am wondering where in Wakefield they would have originally been displayed?  

A Call To Arms - exhibition at Wakefield Museum

Helping the museum conservator clean the WWI cap and arm band raised two questions: who did they belong to, and did they survive the war? We will need to dig around to put an answer to those questions. 

So many survived the war, but developed what we now know to be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The Mental Health display in the building’s atrium has some information on that, but how did families cope with it? This will have been something every community must have faced when their loved ones returned home.

I am sure that there are stories out in Wakefield that could shed a more poignant light onto the finds that we have on display throughout the museum. It certainly opened up stories for my husband, who came in to see the fragment of shell casing that bombed Thornes Road in WW2 and narrowly missed his Mum sheltering under the table. 

WW2 case in the main gallery

The posters will be changing over again in May and another set of newly conserved posters will be on display. The conservators have done a super job repairing the small tears, removing sellotape and cleaning away the surface dirt that will always accumulate on objects. The result has enabled the exhibition team to create a visually stunning exhibition that I can always find 'that something extra' to add to my day.   

A Day In the Life

Welcome to our next 'Day in the Life' blog.  A lot goes into making our museums wonderful places to visits and caring for our collections.  This series of blogs invites staff at Wakefield Museums to tell you about their day:

Louise Bragan

Learning Officer

Rather than focus on one day in my working life I would rather give an overview of what museums learning can provide to the wider Museums Team here at Wakefield. Having said that, today will see me write this blog post, plan and prepare for a 2-5s session for tomorrow, begin to research and write a new session on Charles Waterton for KS1 pupils, and go to buy ingredients for sessions on Wednesday.        

Egyptian shabti

          
Within Wakefield Museums Service I provide, with my colleague, schools workshops for pupils aged 4-16 years. Sessions include handling various objects from the collections to support traditional in school learning and help bring the past to life. From Egyptian artefacts to the remains of an Iron Age chariot, to the toys and games of the 1980s, we deliver sessions that allow pupils to come into direct contact with artefacts made by, used by and owned by real people in the past. 







We offer a core programme of sessions to schools, but we can also develop bespoke sessions upon request (providing we have the collections to support the theme!). This week will see the pilot of a Victorian Food session. 

Pupils will meet a resident of Wakefield's Victorian past - Ann Dixon, mother of 10 living in one of the worst areas of the town. By comparing and contrasting their own diet to that of Ann’s children, pupils will be able to develop empathy with people of the past. 

Along with the schools sessions we also deliver a programme of workshops to families during the holidays, inspired by the museum displays and collection. Currently I am doing my final planning for the February half term, including a boat themed workshop using the Viking era Log boat on display in Wakefield Library and a workshop using the collections to create a short animated story using iPads.

Each month I also run a session for 2-5year olds called Crafty Crocs at Wakefield Museum. This session allows the children and their grown ups to be creative - again taking inspiration from the museum collections and the wider world around us. For the session in February we are using the new 1950s display in Wakefield Museum as our stimulus for craft activities.

My role can be varied and allows me to come into contact with many of the museum's younger audience. I hope that we can inspire some of the youngsters we meet, help bring the textbooks and power points from school to life and help make the connections to the past become real. Through the hands on enquiry we provide, people have the opportunity to experience for themselves the achievements of past craftsmen and women, the daily jobs that people undertook and a chance to touch the past.

To see what Wakefield Museums have to offer for yourself, take a look at our sister blog – 
Wakefield Museums Learning

A Day in the Life

A lot goes into making our museums wonderful places to visits and caring for our collections. This series of blogs invites staff at Wakefield Museums to tell you about their day. 

John Whitaker
Museums curatorial and collections officer

Well the pressure is on here. I have been asked to write about a day at work for the blog and I’ve just read Ali’s entry Alison Creasey Day in the Life from last time. How do I compete with rainforest day?

8:40am

Get into work at Wakefield One, quickly check emails, have coffee, spring into life

9:00am

Meet artist Harriet Lawson and drive over to our off site stores.

Harriet is a very talented artist who we have commissioned to create an art work in one of the showcases in the upper atrium of Wakefield One. She works mainly with pottery and textile and will be using the museums pottery collections to inspire her display.

9:30am

Rummaging through the pottery collections at stores

Our stores are a treasure trove. Museums tend to have more stuff than there is room to display and also some of the collection is very sensitive and will fade if on display for too long and so we need somewhere to store it. It’s a warehouse building and a bit like the end scene of  Raiders of the Lost Ark except I have not yet found the Ark of the Covenant in the collections (you never know though – I have not yet been in every box)

Anyway we have lots of pottery for Harriet to look through, the project focusses on everyday pottery rather than artwork so we picked out some pieces made in Castleford and Ferrybridge as well as plates and teapots from our social history collection, and early Roman and medieval examples. She is interested in getting a complimentary colour pattern so there is a lot of toing and froing. She photographs the chosen items.

Harriet Lawton selecting pieces

Harriet particularly like the pieces which are chipped and worn as they really show that the objects have lived a full life before they came to the museum for retirement – she does take this to the extreme though as she really liked a Chinese plate which is broken in two (broken and repaired BEFORE it came into the museum collection I should add, the old repair has failed!)

12:30pm

Back to Wakefield Museum for lunch – a sad sandwich today.

1:30pm

Back on the road this time over to Pontefract Museum

2:00pm – 4:00pm Meet the Curator

I’m covering Meet the Curator at Pontefract Museum this afternoon. The Meet the Curator afternoons are designed as an opportunity for visitors to bring in treasures they have at home to show a museum curator – to be dated, identified or offered to the museum collections. Our collection is built on generous donations from local people since the first objects came to us in the 1920s. Our criteria for collecting is that they are related to or can tell us stories about people who have lived and or worked in the Wakefield district – and we have not already got examples of them in the collection already. We are definitely sorted for flat irons, radios, mangles, dolly tubs and commemorative royal pottery!

This afternoon is as eventful as ever – an interesting Chinese blue and white pot for identification and Roman coin which turned out to be a copy this time.

In between enquiries I also help our museum designer Andrew Marsland display a First World War British officer’s  jacket in the foyer at Pontefract Museum. The jacket is quite unusual as it displays officer stripes on the sleeves, something which was toned down very early in the war because it identified officers to the enemy and made them a target. The display is part of the many activities we have developed to commemorate the beginning of the First World War. We have a Great War Trail at Wakefield Museum which includes a jar of pickled plums, a decorated biscuit and a watch worn in the trenches to time going over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The subject of the war is difficult to balance. It is a commemoration not a celebration but sometimes it is important to finds the chinks of light in the darkness.

Andrew Marsland working on a First World War jacket for display

4:00pm

Back to Wakefield 

A Day in the Life

Welcome to our first 'Day in the Life' blog.  A lot goes into making our museums wonderful places to visits and caring for our collections.  This series of blogs invites staff at Wakefield Museums to tell you about their day.  First up is Alison Creasey:

Alison Creasey

Learning Officer

The day begins and ends with the setting out of chairs.

It’s a special day today, because the puppets are coming out to play. All manner of puppets: gorillas and orang-utans and iguanas and a turtle and a butterfly and a BABY SLOTH! and a crocodile and a frog – and even a little fluffy anteater, with an ickle bickle ant getting eaten on his tongue!

They’re coming out today because it is RAINFOREST DAY. And a class of special educational needs pupils are coming to play with them. Everybody is a little giddy with excitement, because this is a new venture, and hence could always go hideously wrong. But it doesn’t – it is brilliant because the kids are just as fab as the puppets.

Then I come over all First World War for a couple of hours. A lot of things are coming over First World War these days, but it’s only Wakefield Council who has George Kellet as their man in the trenches. You should look him up. He’s ace. He’s also on twitter.

I have some timetabling to do now. Scheduling with schools when I can do their sessions on the Victorian Schoolroom or Roman Castleford or Medieval Bones or the suchlike. I don’t know which is my favourite: I get to shout at children when I'm their Victorian teacher, which is always a laugh, and makes their real teachers jealous…. but then Medieval Bones has taught me more about scurvy and tooth decay and rickets than I ever imagined I would know.

I have just enough time to pop down to Sandal Castle with my box full of bug pots and magnifying glasses. Sandal Castle is a great place to find all sorts of creepy-crawlies like spiders and centipedes and toads, and I have a school coming there tomorrow to do just that – so out come the chairs for the pre-bug-hunt briefing. Last time, we found a pink grasshopper. Like, BRIGHT pink. Barbie pink, if you will. Google it – it’s an actual thing. This time, I’m hoping for a bumper crop of frogs. They’re lovely to hold (but just for a few seconds, and only if your hands are damp), and they’re great for black death anecdotes.