Outreach « Hertford Museum Blog

Archive for the ‘Outreach’ Category

Half Term & a Family Friendly Museum Award

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Half Term is always busy at Hertford Museum and this week we’ve had hundreds of children through the doors for our day of Chinese New Year activities on Saturday and our Half Term drop in craft sessions yesterday, today and we’re hoping we’ll be just as busy on Thursday!

Chinese musician Jun Shu showing a young visitor how to play her guqin

Throughout the year we always try to have lots of different activities available for children of all ages from craft and colouring to music, food tasting and dressing up as well as our museum and town trails. An it’s not just during the holidays, Toddler Tuesdays take place regularly throughout the year and we have Stay and Play Saturdays on the first Saturday of every month. Plus our regular interactives, trails and quizzes are available whenever we’re open!

Middleton School pupils try on some of our historical costumes.

To celebrate the work that museums do with children and families the Telegraph has launched The 2013 Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award and, if you have ever brought your children or grandchildren (or someone else’s children!) to the museum, we would like you to consider nominating us. The website explains how you can do that but what they really want is an email or letter telling them exactly why you love Hertford Museum!

Just in case you’ve forgotten what activities we have for families here are some pictures from the last 12 months!

Chinese themed craft in the museum this Half Term

Some of the 2011 Big Draw competition entries.

Some Big Draw competition entries.

Samurai masks made as part of our summer 2012 activities

Making sand dinosaur bones in the garden!

Concentrating hard on making a Monkey Pencil Pot during a Toddler Tuesday session.

Stay and Play Saturday in the Andrews Room

Taking part in the Museum’s RNLI Town Trail last year.

Enjoying a Model Railway Day at the museum.

Making Art Deco tile designs with clay.

Chinese themed craft in the museum this Half Term

The 2013 Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award

Email: award@kidsinmuseums.org.uk

Post: Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award, Kids in Museums, Can Mezzanine, 49-51 East Road, London N1 6AH

Deadline for nominations 10 May 2013.

Tags: awards, Big Draw, Half Term Activities, Stay and Play Saturdays, Toddler Tuesdays
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Half Term activities- Hertford’s Big Draw

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

This half term Hertford Museum, Courtyard Arts Centre and Hertford Theatre have teamed up again to celebrate The Big Draw with a week of FREE activities for families.

On Tuesday 30th and Wednesday 31st October you can visit Hertford Museum to draw some specially selected curious objects from the museum’s collection. Then take your work to Courtyard Arts where you will create a painting inspired by your artwork. Full instructions and directions between venues will be available on the days of the event.

Some of the 2011 Big Draw competition entries.

There will be a chance to enter your painting at either venue into a competition to win a family ticket to see this year’s Christmas pantomime ‘Dick Whittington’ at Hertford Theatre; the categories are under 8’s and over 8’s.

Last year’s prize winning entries (and runners up) on display at Hertford Theatre.

An exhibition of the paintings will be on display at Hertford Theatre from Friday 2nd November from 2.30 pm, where a private view and prize giving will be held with refreshments for all. The exhibition will also be open at the theatre on Saturday 3rd November between 10am and 6pm

As well as all the Big Draw excitement Hertford Museum is providing special Celebration of Autumn activities on Thursday 1st November 2012. Come along from 10.30am- 3.30pm and drop in to the Andrews Room to make a montage of autumn leaves or a beautiful fireworks picture ready for Bonfire Night! Activities are £1.50 per child.

Tags: Big Draw, Half Term Activities
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Hertford Carnival- Sunday 24th June 2012

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

Is everyone ready for the Carnival on Sunday?

Hertford Museum is putting together a float for the Carnival procession. We’ve worked with lots of different groups and schools to make some incredible models of objects from our collection and they’re all finished now ready to be put together on Sunday morning.

Thank you to Richard Hale, Hollybush. Mill Mead, Bengeo Primary School, Hertford Heath Primary School, Selections Children’s Centre, Stapleford School and Morgans for all their help in putting the models together as well as to the fantastic volunteers at the museum!

It’s the first time there’s been a Carnival in Hertford for more than 10 years so we’ve dug out some pictures of previous carnivals from our collections to share with you:

If you want to know all the details about Carnival day then take a look at the Hertford Carnival website.

We’ll be taking part in the procession at 2pm, having a stall in the Castle Grounds all day AND the Museum itself will be open from 1pm-5pm with Afternoon Teas being served in the garden and a Model Railway Day as well!

Tags: Afternoon Tea, Hertford Carnival, Model Railway Day, Schools
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An ordinary day at Hertford Museum

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

We like to keep busy at Hertford Museum and today has been particularly full!

This morning our Curator, Sara, was out buying bookshelves for our new library at our Stores. We’ve cleaned out the room that is going to become the library and carpeted it but now we need shelves to house all the books! If you come along to our Open Stores Day on Saturday 14th July you’ll be able to see how far along our plans are!

Our old Library- you can see why it needed more space and more shelves!

While she was doing that Assistant Curator Sarah was at a meeting of the Hertfordshire Museums Group where we share ideas and news with other local museums. This meeting also involved lots of presentations on projects funded by the Hertfordshire Museums Partnership Small Grant Scheme- our project was updating Modes, the computer programme we use to document our collections, and training our volunteers to use it.

St Catherines School, Hoddesdon, playing with the toys in one of our loans boxes

Our Learning Officer Eleanor has been talking to schools today about our loans boxes- these are themed boxes of objects that schools can borrow to use in their classrooms. We have several on themes including Beside the Seaside, Toys of the Past & Egyptians and we are now involved in a project to research how schools make use of them.

And everyone else has been busy too. Connie our Finance Officer has been updating our accounts whilst our Museum Support Assistants, Julie & Holly, have been looking after the shop and the front desk and answering enquiries (you can read about the kinds of things we get asked in this post from February) and in the garden Alison is clipping the box hedges that make up our knot garden- it’s looking beautiful and green at the moment after all that rain!

The museum knot garden two years ago, visit us to see how much it's grown!

And after all of that this afternoon we’ve been discussing an exhibition we’ll be holding next year on Bengeo! We’ll talk more about the exhibition much nearer the time but we’ve got lots of ideas already.

Tags: Bengeo Stories, Collections, Museum Garden, Museum Store, Schools
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Hertford Carnival- thank you & a sneak peek

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Thank you to everyone who dropped a green token (or 6) into our box at Waitrose last month. We raised a wonderful £470 which will all go towards our float for the Hertford Carnival and the work we are doing with local schools for it.

As a big thank you here are some pictures of our hardworking staff & volunteers putting together the bases of our giant objects ready for them to go out to our school partners to be built up and decorated!

Can you guess what any of these are going to become?

Tags: Fundraising, Hertford Carnival, Schools, Volunteers
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Waitrose Community Matters & the Hertford Carnival

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

If any of you have been into the Hertford branch of Waitrose in the last week you may have noticed that Hertford Museum is one of the three charities in their Community Matters scheme this month.

Each month Waitrose have £1000 to give away and they split it between three charities but how much we each get depends on how many green tokens shoppers put into our box so PLEASE collect your token at the till and add it to our box.

Any money we are given by Waitrose will be going towards our Carnival float for this year’s Hertford Carnival in June. We’ve got big plans to decorate our float- we’re hoping to make giant models of some of the objects from our collection- like our Samurai and maybe an ENORMOUS toothbrush.

But we won’t be making them alone- we’re working with lots of local schools who will each take on a different model. The schools taking part are:

Bengeo Primary School
Hollybush Primary School
Richard Hale School
The Sele School
Morgans Primary School
Hertford Heath School
Hertford Selections Children’s Centre

So your Waitrose token in our box will help all of those schools as well as us AND you’ll be able to enjoy wha we create at the the Hertford Carnival on Sunday 24th June 2012

Tags: Fundraising, Hertford Carnival, Schools
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Hertford Museum & RNLI Town Trail

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

This Easter we are teaming up with the RNLI to create our town trail- following on from the successes of our Scarecrow and Doctor Who trails.

The trail has an RNLI theme and any money raised will be split between the RNLI and the museum.

RNLI Lifeboat stations in the UK

Shops are being asked to put up a small display based on one of the towns attached to a lifeboat station and then we will be creating two trails, one for adults and one for children, which will take you round all of the window displays and ask some questions!

Today some (very well wrapped up!) museum staff and RNLI volunteers delivered letters to many town centre businesses and we’ve already had 7 towns snapped up so if you own a town centre shop or business and want to get involved then call us ASAP!

We’ll let you know more about the trails (and some exciting prizes) as well as our other Easter Holiday activities nearer the time!

Tags: Easter Holiday activities, RNLI trail
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Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

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Starting a new Chapter for Hertford Museum

Jeremy Deller on his Front Row spot last night (May 17th) gave the museum gentle approval before the announcement of the Art Fund shortlist on May 19th. Whatever the result the museum has had a fantastic run and it was good to hear his enthusiasm for the Friday Country Market and Rhubarb crumble and to hear his laconic remark ‘so Hippos were once common in Hertford’ . For me it’s been an exciting beginning to my curatorship and whether the Art Fund prize money comes our way or not (announcement is scheduled for June 15th so watch your Twitter feeds for reminders to vote for us in the next few days) it’s put us on the map for those who have never been to Hertford or enjoyed its Hippo reserve!

First impressions of the museum for a new boy coming in as curator are of the really interesting collections and remarkable library of papers, photos and books. The supportive Town Council which funds us may be part of the long suffering public sector but we have a true partnership with them and have already opened a dialogue about how much more we can do together to reach the community. Extra money has been voted in the current year to retain our wonderful Learning Officer and for our part there can be some help offered at the Castle to improve what is done there for youngsters and to enrich displays in the Robing Room.

How many readers knew that Sainsburys had arranged to vary their planning consent for the McMullens Brewery site? A Heritage Cetre is now proposed as part use of the Victorian Building and we have been in touch to see what we can do to help. Fingers crossed that Sainsburys recognise that we have collectyions and expertise to offer as well as a strong community link – maybe we could be offering creche facilities side by side with workshops for mums out for the weekly shop and planning and creative half hour as part of their day. We are nothing if we’re not a community museum and the Art Fund Prize is already adding immeasurably to our credibility for the Sainsbury project and in the Town generally.

Tags: Art Fund, Education work, Sainsburys
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Hertford Heath Roadshow is a success!

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

The Museum Roadshow made it’s way up to a Hertford Heath on the 11th August 2009.

Hertford Museum staff were joined by HALS, the Library Service and the Police to provide activities around the theme of ‘Dark Herts’.

We took the museum collections related to Crime and Punishment in Hertford and the archives gave visitors the opportunity to trace their very own criminal ancestors!

The Police officers gave tips on how to keep safe in the 21st century and even brought along modern and older uniforms for visitors to try on!

A good day was had by all, and most notably perhaps due to the cream teas courtesy of Connie!?

PCSO Paul Weston and Serena from HALS with one young visitor posing for the Mercury cameras!

Sally taking an interest in our objects and information panels Enjoying delicious cream teas! From left, Viv, museum volunteer and Sally and Connie, museum staff.

PCSO Paul Weston giving tips to visitors on keeping safe these days

Ken Griffin, Criminal Historian showing a visitor how to trace his criminal ancestry...I wonder if he found anything scandalous!

The motley crew...BACK ROW (FROM RIGHT): Julie Sessions - Museum Assistant, Connie Taylor - Museum Administrator, Colin Clare - Herts Police, Serena Williams and Nick Connell - HALS, Ken Griffin - Criminal Historian, Paul Weston - PCSO, Herts Police. FRONT ROW (FROM RIGHT): Sally Wilkes - Museum Assistant, Ruth Stratton - Asst. Curator, Hertford Museum, Vivianne Robertson, Museum Volunteer and Eleanor Payne, Learning Officer.

The motley crew...BACK ROW (FROM LEFT): Julie Sessions - Museum Assistant, Connie Taylor - Museum Administrator, Colin Clare - Herts Police, Serena Williams and Nick Connell - HALS, Ken Griffin - Criminal Historian, Paul Weston - PCSO, Herts Police. FRONT ROW (FROM LEFT): Sally Wilkes - Museum Assistant, Ruth Stratton - Assistant. Curator, Museum, Vivianne Robertson, Museum Volunteer and Eleanor Payne, Learning Officer.

Tags: Museum Roadshow, School Holidays
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