A remarkable woman: Stephanie Park

We have recently added a fantastic set of objects to our collection related to the life of a remarkable local woman, the late Stephanie Park.

Stephanie Park née Hopley (1940-2012) was a nurse and midwife from Wakefield, who became a disability pioneer when she had her left leg amputated following a car accident. Stephanie took up shooting, competing for Great Britain and winning many prizes. Later, she gave up much of her time to coaching others and helped to establish the disability advice telephone line, DIAL. She also served as secretary of the Yorkshire branch of the British Sports Association for the Disabled (now part of Activity Alliance / English Federation of Disability Sport).

We are very grateful to her proud son, Daniel, for kindly donating his mother’s archive to us. Stephanie was an inspiration to Daniel, who wanted to make sure that disabled women are represented in the museum’s collection. This is just a selection of objects to give a flavour of the collection and of Stephanie’s many achievements.

Stephanie qualified as a midwife in 1963. Her midwife's medallion was made by the jewellers Thomas Fattorini Ltd and features Juno Lucina, a Roman goddess of childbirth

After losing her leg, Stephanie took up sport, adopting shooting as her preferred discipline. This certificate below from the National Small Bore Rifle Association officially gave her permission to compete from her wheelchair.

 

This brass chalice for first place was the first trophy Stephanie won in her shooting career in 1985

Stephanie came first in her event at the Disability Air Rifle World Championships held at Appledoorn, the Netherlands in 1987. She received this Delftsche Huys beer stein as part of her prize:





This is a target shot from the National Small Bore Rifle Association Championship in Cardiff, 1989, where Stephanie Park won 1^st place in the 10 metre air rifle event. At the Cardiff 1989 Open Shoot non-disabled and disabled athletes competed on an equal basis.

Stephanie was very proud of this achievement, getting all 10 shots through the central ring. Her target shot is one of the 100 Objects in our 100 Years of Collecting Online Exhibition.

Stephanie also gave up her time to coach and support other disabled athletes and was an adviser to the Sport Aid Foundation. Many of the athletes she helped went on to compete in the London Paralympics of 2012. 

This trophy was awarded posthumously as recognition for all Stephanie’s efforts for disability sport: 

Stephanie died in 2012. Friends and family remembered her warmly. 

Her proud son Daniel kindly donated her archive to us in 2014, and her memory now lives on in our collection.

Make and use a Pinhole Camera

Pinhole camera workshop - with Bob Clayden

Saturday 19th March

Castleford Forum Museum

From 9.45am to 3.30pm

 

Adult session – ages 18+

FREE

Inspired by the wonderful Jack Hulme photographs on display in Castleford Museum, join us for this adult workshop with local artist, Bob Clayden to make a pinhole camera from a recycled container, and take photographs with it.
The photographs will be taken in the area outside the museum on black and white photographic paper and the negatives developed in a pop-up darkroom under red safe light.

You will be shown techniques using Apps, open source or commercial software to make positive prints from the paper negative so  you may want to bring along digital camera or smart phone to take the images home with you.
FREE - booking essential on 01924 302700 or email as places are limited

February Half Term Planning

There's a lot happening at Wakefield's Museums and Castles this half term!

From trails and object handling, to animation and crafts, there's something to keep everyone entertained - with an Iron Age Day with warrior face-painting and crafts to finish the week in Castleford - and it is all FREE!

Click on image to enlarge

For the full listing, follow this link.

Precious - beautiful new exhibition from the V&A

On loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, a selection of Edmund Waterton's amazing ring collection is now on exhibition at Wakefield Museum.  For the first time since 1871, these rings are displayed along with their original display box, from the Wakefield Museum collection. It is all a thing of beauty.

 

 

 

 

To celebrate this sumptuous exhibition, we are offering some free workshops to get involved with!

 

Wednesday 27 January

6pm,

FREE 

Adult hands-on workshop

Ring making

Design and make your own statement rings using glass beads, Swarovski crystals and pearls. You'll create stylish and fun jewellery that can accessorise any outfit!

 

Free, but booking essential as places are limited - call 01924 302700 or email

 

 

 

Tuesday 9 February

1.30pm to 3pm

FREE

Digital animation workshop for 12-16 year olds

Precious: 'The Power of the Ring'

Take inspiration from the amazing rings in the 'Precious' exhibition, create tales about 'The Power of the Ring' and animate using iPads.

 

Free, but booking essential as places are limited - call 01924 302700 or email

 

Friday 12 February

10am - 11.30am or 1.30pm - 3pm

FREE

Hands-on workshop for families with 6-12 year olds

It's a Ring Thing

Discover some amazing facts from Edmund Waterton's collection of rings and get creative with some ring related crafts.

 

Free, but booking essential as places are limited - call 01924 302700 or email

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Father Christmas is coming to Wakefield Museum!

On Saturday 19th December, come to Wakefield Museum for a magical experience!

Father Christmas will be 'at home' in his Victorian kitchen, to chat to families - and he may have a gift for you - if you've been good!

A 'Santa's Grotto' with a traditional feel, and plenty of other Christmas craft activities to try while you wait to see the man himself.

FREE, no need to book

 

Our next adult workshop

We had a fantastic evening with Andy Singleton making paper birds on 11th November. 


Paper birds made with Andy Singleton's instruction - a fun evening!

Next month, we will still be working with paper to try bookbinding, with Timid Elk.

Timid Elk trained in ceramics but found more joy in creating the paper test pieces - and so now mostly works with paper.  Her work includes exquisitely intricate shaped paper pieces, and she has designed a workshop for us with her trademark use of old Ordinance Survey Maps.

Some of you may have seen a piece of Timid Elk work on display in Wakefield before - including the gorgeous lamp that was on display outside the museum for the 2014 Lit Fest.

This lamp was made by Timid Elk

Close-up of this extraordinary piece

Of course, in a day's workshop, we can't expect to be able to create something like this! 

To get a taste of the techniques, we are running a day's workshop on Saturday 12th December to create a hand-bound book.


Create a Hand Bound Book - with Timid Elk

Saturday 12 December

Wakefield Museum Learning Zone

10am to 4pm

Adult session – ages 18+

£15 per head – including light refreshments (Lunch not provided, but there is a café on site)

Learn the technique of hand binding to create an individual sketchbook/notebook. Decorate your book by taking inspiration and utilising a selection of Ordinance Survey maps.

 

Bookings with full payment must be made in advance.  Click here to follow a link to online payments

 

Working with the next generation of teachers!

We have had a couple of fantastic work placement teaching students working with us:

Our names are Megan and Terri. We are studying Primary Education: Early Years at Leeds Trinity University and over the past two weeks, we have undertaken a placement with the Wakefield Museum Services.

The purpose of our placement has been to experience learning in an alternative setting.

Throughout the two weeks, we have had the opportunity to observe several workshops (such as WW1, Victorian and Egyptian) and assist with the activities involved in them such as handling artefacts. Having the chance to handle some real artefacts such as weapons used in WW1 really excited us and we were both fascinated by the mummified baby crocodile in the Ancient Egyptian collection!

Mummified baby crocodile

The children involved in these workshops have been both Key Stage One and Two children. These workshops were very interesting and engaging, but they also allowed us to successfully develop our own subject knowledge and confidence when working with children. We also observed a workshop at Sandal Castle and were given the chance to visit other places off site such as Pontefract and Castleford Museums and Pontefract Castle (where we went on a magazine tour) to gain a broader knowledge of how museums and heritage sites contribute to education.

Completing our placement at Wakefield Museum has allowed us to see how History lessons in school can be developed into cross-curricular sessions. For example, the WW1 session that introduces children to Wakefield soldier George Kellett incorporated diary writing, therefore covering aspects of the Literacy curriculum. Part of this session involves an actor portraying George Kellett by reading extracts from his diary to the children. We were also given an insight of how much content is covered in each session depending on the time allocated to it. We found that the amount of content covered was perfect for the amount of time a session lasted.

George Kellett's diary

Actor playing George Kellett

 

As well as observing and supporting workshops, we were given a project to work on throughout our placement. This was to create a teaching pack on Charles Waterton that the museum could use to encourage schools to engage more with local study and the museum itself. In order to help us with this, we researched Charles Waterton extensively (both before and during the placement) and visited the Charles Waterton exhibit in the museum. We put together three cross-curricular sessions to support the teaching of Charles Waterton in both Key Stage One and Two and also included a range of possible follow up activities, early years input, outdoor activities and possible visits (such as Walton Hall where Charles Waterton lived) that may enhance learning.

Caiman caught by Charles Waterton in 1820

 

It is very difficult to choose one aspect of our time at Wakefield Museum as our favourite because there has been such a wide variety of opportunity. However, our particular highlights were handling artefacts from a range of different historical periods, watching children’s faces when they saw these artefacts and observing the role play part of the WW1 workshop. We would definitely recommend this placement to other students and we look forward to bringing our future classes to the museum!

Thank you Megan and Terri - it has been great to have some fresh insights into our sessions. We wish you well with your studies and hope to see you with your classes in the future!