York Museums Trust

Learning and Communities

For the best part of the school year from November through to April the Yorkshire Museum was closed and so we ran an outreach service for local primary schools. York Castle Museum and York Art Gallery were so popular that, despite having one museum closed, the total number of educational visits to all three sites only dropped from 31,108 to 28,371. Overall the number of people attending activities and events organised on all three sites has risen from 84,386 to 135,859. This is partly due to the popularity of York Castle Museum Studio programme and Christmas at the Castle.

We organised many events over the year but one of the most important was the collaboration with North Yorkshire Business and Education Partnership (NYBEP) and Creative York to organise the Create Your Future careers event for young people who are looking for a career in creative industries.

During July, the community archaeology project organised 13 off-site outdoor events involving some 4,879 people in Roman Cooking, Roman hairdressing and Roman brick and tile making. The research for these events was undertaken by York College students and the York Hand Made Brick Company.

All four of our museums and galleries have been awarded the new Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge recognising our ongoing commitment to learning.

On 3 September, to coincide with the 70 th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, we opened Reflections on War at York Art Gallery which was a community exhibition created by over 50 people aged from 11 to 93 years working together and supported by songwriters, poets and curators. The exhibition was filled with personal insight and experience. We produced two books one of poetry and one of recollections.

An exciting new development was the Artists in the Archives project which was in partnership with Creative York part of Science City York. Four artists from York created an installation in the studio at York Art Gallery inspired by the Mesolithic collections of Yorkshire Museum.

We have continued to develop our Adult Learning programme in partnership with ACE Adult and Community Education, The Centre for Life long learning at York University and OCA (Open College for the Arts).

We are very grateful for the advice the Learning Advisory Panel and the teachers advisory panel gave to us in regard to the learning strategy 2010-2015.