York Museums Trust

Learning and Communities

Learning both formal and informal is at the heart of our work. We are pleased to report that, despite the closure of Yorkshire Museum and the disruption at both York Art Gallery and York Castle Museum, we have increased the total number of educational visits to all three sites to 29,205 this year from 28,371 in 2009-10. In addition the number of people attending activities and events organised on all three sites was 129,738. This is slightly down on the same period 2009-10 (135,859) but is a marked increase on the same period 2008-09. (84,386).

During the closure of the Yorkshire Museum we continued to run an outreach service for local primary schools. A new and extended offer of primary school workshops was made available on reopening, and has proven very popular, particularly the Roman workshop and the Dinosaurs workshops.

At York Art Gallery, despite the closure of the Burton Gallery, over the year, Primary School workshop visits were up, reaching a total of 1,978 children. The workshop we designed to accompany the China exhibition proved particularly popular, with a total of 27 workshops being delivered during the period of the exhibition, more than doubling the number of workshops delivered during the same period in 2009.

We ran a very successful Early Years Week at the end of March – Humpty Dumpty at the Castle. This was a week of hands-on, role play and craft activities for children aged 3-6 years from local pre schools and nurseries. York Castle Museum continues to attract school visits; delivering workshops to 6,153 children over the year, and accommodating general, self-led visits to 14,230 more.

Around 1,500 participants have attended a wide variety of adult learning workshops and events over all three sites including a new Book Club and an Eboracum Tour leaflet. Crafts at the Castle was a very popular adult learning project which saw local crafts people hold practical workshops for adults in York Castle Museum. Throughout the various workshops, learners produced felt corsages, jewellery and woven willow Christmas decorations, all inspired by the collection. The highlight was perhaps having locally renowned rag rug artists Lewis and Louisa Creed teach people how to make their own rag rug to take home.

A number of sessions have been run by partnership organisations including the University of York Centre for Lifelong Learning and City of York Council's Adult & Community Education Team. Partnerships continue to play an important role across the whole of learning with the North Yorkshire Business and Education Partnership (NYBEP)'s 'Create Your Future' event now firmly established in our calendar. This year the event marked the beginning of York Business Week and went on to win the prestigious, Global Entrepreneurship Badge of Honour for Outstanding Impact.

Projects with university students have also gone from strength to strength this year, a trend which looks set to continue, particularly through the 'Sensory Stories' project, being run by the University of York's Humanities Research Centre. The project is designed to train postgraduates to communicate their research with audiences beyond the university and focuses on using museum and gallery objects as a vehicle to present research as stories or activities which appeal to the senses. Groups of students are working at all sites.