Arts Council England funding of £111K secured for Wakefield Museums

Wakefield Council Museums have been successful in securing funding of £111,140 from Arts Council England.  This funding will enable the district's museums to deliver an exciting programme of exhibitions and activity over the next year.

This funding will focus on improving the visitors experience across our museum venues and includes projects such as:

- improving family activities

- reviewing  our 'welcome'

- a spectacular exhibition at Wakefield Museum 

- a project collecting & displaying Wakefield Stories 

- investment in staff training and development

- involving more people in our changing displays

Cllr Les Shaw, Portfollio Holder for Sport & Culture said, ‘This is a fantastic boost for our museums, and more importantly for our visitors. This programme will enable us to build in long-lasting improvements to our offer, giving visitors more access to museum collections.’

Sarah Maxfield, Area Director, North, Arts Council England, said: ‘“Our Museums resilience fund supports museums by enabling them to become more sustainable and robust, whatever their size, and helping them to offer improved experiences for both audiences and artists. I’m delighted that 27 museums across the North have been awarded a total of £3.7 million in this round and look forward to seeing the results of this funding in the future. The Arts Council’s aim is to achieve great art and culture for everyone – the North has some fantastic museums across the area which between them reach thousands of visitors each year therefore greatly supporting us in our mission. ”

Keep up to date with developments by following us on Twitter @WFMuseums, and this blog!

Cooking up a treat at Wakefield Museum

Wakefield Museum has just opened a new child-sized 1950s inspired kitchen:

We have also added new displays around the kitchen with 1950s objects from the collection. This display shows the cabinet that inspired the design of the kitchen units and features some of the objects that appear in the kitchen cupboard graphics.

There is also a display of 1950s toys.

A photograph of street in Wakefield taken in the 1950s forms the view from the window.  

To celebrate the new kitchen we threw a party, taking tips from a 1950s party planning magazine in the museum collection.

Dr Annie Gray cooked up a buffet using recipes from the magazine. Delights included tinned pineapple and Marmite sandwiches; prawns in aspic; 'dunkers' and teen-age hot dogs! Here she is getting some assistance decorating a cake with glacé cherries and angelica with her assistant for the evening!

They were very proud of their creations...

Visit the kitchen to play or just to reminisce about family memories.  The Kitchen is in Wakefield Museum's 'Front Room' area and is free to visit.

The Iron Age is coming to Castleford Forum Museum!

Castleford goes back to the Iron Age for a special event on Saturday 21st February.

The perfect end for the half-term holidays!

Castleford Museum has a very important Iron Age display - the Ferry Fryston chariot - and this event will allow visitors to see the chariot in a new way.

The Iron Age chariot on display in the museum

The Ferry Fryston chariot was found in 2003 during improvements to the A1 (M) by the Highways Agency. It dates back to 200BC and was buried with the remains of a man estimated to have been in his 30s or 40s, from Scotland or Scandinavia. It is one of the most significant finds of its kind. 20 chariots have been found from this period, but this is one of only two to not have been dismantled before they were buried.

 Click here for more information about the chariot.

For this free event, we will also be showing a half-size replica of the chariot, which really brings this important archaeological find to life.

The half-scale replica of the Iron Age chariot will be on display

The event will be fun for all the family, with Iron Age inspired craft activities, storytelling and the opportunity to meet an Iron Age warrior! 

Have your face painted with woad patterns and be ready to go into battle!

Woad face-painting for warriors!

We ♥ Valentines!

Happy Valentines day

We hope you have your hearts desire... if not here is a selection of 'hearts' from our collections

Half Penny, 1793

A half penny token to be used at Fieldings grocer and tea dealer, decorated with a heart motif.

Playbill, 1824

A playbill for the Wakefield Theatre.

Hair-tidy

A home made hair-tidy, decorated with pearls and ribbon.

Brooch, late Victorian

The heart is made of cornelian.

Bracelet

A bracelet made of five strips of horse hair linked  with bands of gold.  In 2004 a visitor from South Africa identified the material as elephant's tail - 'Much too thick to be horsehair'.

Strap-end, 1450 - 1485

A decorative end of a belt, found at Sandal Castle

Brooch, 1920s

A brooch made from plastic

Pin cushion, 1914 - 1918

Decorated pin cushion with Yorks and Lancs Regimental emblems.  Visit Wakefield Museum to see a selection of First World War objects, in the Great War Trail.

Bracket, c.16th Century 

16th Century timber bracket with a heart shaped design.

Dunderdale dish, 1800 - 1810

A creamware dish, hand painted.  This matches a supper service in the collection of 4 dishes with the same design.  It was made by Castleford pottery Dunderdale and Co. Visit Castleford Museum to see a display of Castleford pottery.

Lovehearts, Victorian

Ashtrays, 1936 - 1959

Ashtrays made by Bagley & co.  Visit Pontefract Museum to see a display on Bagley's glass.

Many Happy Returns!

Many Happy Returns of this day to Mr Richard Lowndes Salmon!

This lovely cup in our collection was given to a Mr Richard Lowndes Salmon - (presumably for his birthday) 240 years ago today!

Rev Richard Lowndes Salmon was vicar of Sandbach in Cheshire.

This sort of named cup is not uncommon - see this blog post from March 2012 to see other (more local ones) from our collection. 

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

Wakefield Museum Young Curators Club - in their own words

On Saturday 17 ^th January Wakefield Museums Young Curators Club met for their first session of 2015.

The group were asked to create a blog post on what they do at the club and why other children their age should visit the museum. Here is what they said:

Hello we are Oliver and Jack and we belong to the young curators based in Wakefield. We attend every third Saturday of each month.

We attend because it gives us something to do and a reason to get out of the house. At the young curators we do activities such as handling ancient objects and creating our own versions, as well as a lot more things that you could find out if you attend.

Above is an image in which we were looking around into the museum for ideas for this blog. We enjoyed dressing up and drawing the objects being displayed

Sessions are on the third Saturday of each month from 10:00 to 11:30 at Wakefield museum

SO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND DO SOMETHING CURATIVE  !!!!!

If you are from 8-13 then you are free to join our club!

We are all creative in some way and we like arts and crafts.

It’ s about history and art

So get out of the house and get creative

Where do I start?

We come to Wakefield Museum every third Saturday. We look at old objects and make things about them. In the museum I like the wireless and the polecat.

At Young Curators Club we help children age 8-13 understand our history. I love this club because you have lots of fun and have even got to make food!

We make things and paint things, hold real artefacts and have fun!

Click here for more details about joining the Young Curators Club