09 Sep How schools can visit a museum during Covid
The UK’s biggest new arts and heritage venue, The Box in Plymouth, today revealed its innovative education programme for students of all ages and abilities. Due to open to the public on 29 September 2020, bookings will go live from 10 September.
Designed in consultation with teachers and educators across the country, the programme features onsite workshops and artist-facilitated learning, take-away loan boxes, online resources and virtual sessions, offering a rich variety of creative learning experiences across the curriculum.
The sessions will take students on journeys around the world and back in time taking inspiration from The Box’s remarkable collection of over two million artefacts, brand-new exhibition spaces and state-of-the art research and learning facilities. This object-based learning prompts students from Early Years Foundation Stage to Key Stage 5 to develop their skills in both creative and scientific enquiry, focussing their minds on topics of local, national, and international significance.
Students will be able to explore the life of prehistoric mammals, Ancient Egyptian culture, The Tudors, the Spanish Armada, the fantastic feats of engineering on view in Plymouth and, of course, the iconic ship the Mayflower, whose journey across the Atlantic to America 400 years ago is being commemorated over the next few months. There’s even a STEAMpunk escape room designed to challenge students’ ingenuity!
Every effort has been made to ensure onsite visits are a valuable experience for every child, from accommodating a range of learning styles – verbal, aural and kinaesthetic – to creating opportunities for them to study individually, in pairs and in groups, plus creating an entire strand of programming for children with special educational needs.
Councillor Pete Smith, Deputy Leader: “It’s been a strange few months for our young people who are now preparing for a return to the classroom under very different circumstances to before. The Box’s brilliantly designed education programme will no doubt help to provide a roadmap for them to safely re-engage with the curriculum, as well as learn the creative and critical thinking skills that are so vital in an increasingly uncertain world.”
Nicola Moyle, Head of Heritage, Art and Film at The Box said: We can’t wait to welcome schools to The Box, to share our wonderful collections via the tailor-made experiences we’ve worked so hard to develop and start their lifelong journey as cultural learners. We’re thrilled with how we’ve been able to integrate the latest thinking on educational methods and experiences with object-based learning to inspire students’ creativity and curiosity.”
COVID CONFIDENT
In recognition of the challenges faced by educators in 2020, The Box has introduced a series of safety and social distancing measures to ensure that its site is COVID-secure. These include: temporarily reducing visitor numbers, only allowing one school group onsite at any time, a separate site entrance and carefully planned one-way routes around the venue, hand sanitiser and sink in its learning room and enhanced cleaning of regular touch points. In line with government guidance, the wearing of face coverings will be mandatory for all visitors over 11 years.
MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAMME:
WORKSHOPS
From 5 October, schools can 20 different workshops will be available. On Mondays, when The Box is closed to the public, school groups will have exclusive access to all the galleries. Meanwhile, from Tuesday to Friday, careful steps have been taken to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience onsite with a Learning Facilitator for the day as well as a dedicated entrance next to the Simmons Learning Room.
Early Years Foundation Stage, age 0-5 years
Learning opportunities for The Box’s littlest visitors include: Dear Zoo Museum, an adventure to stimulate the senses and develop museum-visiting skills through handling real and replica objects, and Science and Species: Marine Life, a sensory journey exploring Plymouth’s underwater life.
Primary students KS1-2, age 5-11
Each interactive and immersive workshop is led by an expert facilitator who invites students to become something extraordinary while they learn from The Box’s collections. Through these sessions, students can transform into:
- a scientist who handles the skulls of different animals, learning to identify and categorise them;
- a toymaker, creating, designing and testing their own creations;
- an engineer who learns about the amazing feats of engineering in Plymouth before solving design challenges of their own;
- an assistant curator to the archaeology department, helping identify and display a box of artefacts from Ancient Egypt;
- an archaeologist who discovers how prehistoric objects were made and used;
- a polar explorer following in the footsteps of Captain Scott, imagining his experiences and developing their own writing;
- a detective hunting out the truth about the Blitz in Plymouth;
- a historian investigating the legacy of Sir Francis Drake through real and replica objects;
- an adventurer in Tudor and Elizabethan Plymouth, discovering the role the city played in the world of exploration; and
- a biologist who examines how the animals of Plymouth have evolved and diversified over tens of thousands of years.
Secondary students KS3-4, age 11-16
Workshops for older students will support their journey to becoming independent learners across a range of subjects from Britain after 1945 to The Spanish Armada to the legacy of Transatlantic Slavery and Abolition. There’s even a STEAMpunk Escape Room that challenges classes to work as a team through science, technology, engineering and maths puzzles connected to Plymouth’s buildings and structures.
SEN (Special Education Needs), ages 3-25
The Box has worked closely with SEN teachers, students and specialists to design a program of 90-minute workshops for students with special educational needs and disabilities, including those with profound and multiple disabilities and autistic spectrum conditions.
The SEN workshops are modular so individual teachers can combine 2-3 of the 8 available to create flexible experiences for their students based on their particular requirements. The scheme has also been piloted with local SEN schools to ensure its practicability.
Sensory props play a significant role in each of the sessions, supporting students’ response to The Box’s galleries, displays and resources. Students can time-travel back to 30-40,000 years ago when mammoths and cave lions roamed Plymouth or sail the wild seas on an Elizabethan ship. They can experience life as an explorer preparing for a life-changing journey or even try their hand at building a model ship. The session Plymouth is my Homeshowcases how the city has changed over the years and Searching for the Stars encourages students to explore The Box, asking appropriate adults for help.
ARSTIST FACILITATORS
Schools can also explore The Box’s extraordinary contemporary art exhibitions and commissions with the guidance of a practicing artist. Students will be encouraged to develop their own creative responses to artworks and themes in the galleries. These artist-led workshops use Philosophy for Children and Visual Thinking Strategy techniques to empower students to engage with art, reflect and express their opinions.
Each session is guided by an artist and supported by a Learning Facilitator. The sessions available are: Art as Reflection, in which artist facilitators explore in-situ works at The Box by artists who have responded to the museum’s historic collections and displays; Art as Participation, where the session focusses on how large-scale installations are created for and shaped by the public, changing public spaces and how we interact with each other;Art as Contemplation, in which the artist-facilitator works closely with students to develop their contemplation and creative enquiry skills; and Art, People and Place, which focusses on how The Box’s artworks capture the extraordinarily varied people and culture of Plymouth.
LOAN BOXES
For schools unable to visit The Box in person, Loan Boxes will be available for hire. These collections of real and replica objects, archive material and film cover a range of curriculum-linked areas. All Loan Boxes are quarantined and cleaned between uses, offering a great way to engage with The Box’s collections without leaving the classroom.
These inspiring thought-starters are perfect for teaching History, STEAM or enhancing literacy and oracy with real hands-on experience. Highlights include: Ancient Egypt Mummification filled with a mummy, Canopic jars and the replicas of the various organs removed during mummifications; archival film footage and images presented in a toolbox covering Plymouth’s amazing engineering feats in Engineering South West; and WWII: Evacuees from Plymouth filled with film, images and documents of the children evacuated from Plymouth during the Second World War.
Other topics explored in the boxes include: The Tudors and Elizabethans, Ancient Greece and Rome, Viking & Saxon Britain, Victorian Writing, the Building Materials of Plymouth, African Drums and African Mbira, early photographic equipment and First Aid in World War II.
ONLINE RESOURCES
With a range of topics including the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Mayflower, Native American culture and a make-your-own Herbarium, The Box’s online resources are a hub for inspiration. The free online resources include films, image banks, podcasts, animations and more, and support a number of curriculum areas, with more to be launched every term.
One particular highlight is Plymouth in World War I (Key Stage 2-3), which comprises a downloadable resource of images from The Box’s collections along with supporting activity ideas and thought-starters. It explores the impact of WWI on local peoples’ lives, in particular: military conscription, the human cost of war and the ‘home front’.
Another is an online series for students at Key Stage 4 and 5 and students at Higher Education or Further Education level studying art and design, titled In the process of (doing something). This series is comprised of filmed interviews with practicing artists – some of whom are represented within The Box’s collections or who have chosen to work in the region – sharing their creative process.
VIRTUAL LEARNING
This autumn, The Box will present a series of monthly virtual lessons delivered by a team of museum experts. Starting with the Mayflower, the sessions explore history from a range of perspectives. A core principle has been to ensure Native American voices are included. This was made possible by new research conducted by Helen Chamberlain, a University of Plymouth PhD student who visited Plymouth in Massachusetts to interview representatives of the Wampanoag Advisory Committee about how they wanted students in the UK to learn about their culture. The research trip was generously supported by the Charlton Foundation. Sessions will take place monthly from September to December, see the website for further information.
You can find out more about The Box at www.theboxplymouth.com