Families LOVE the Herbert's activities
09 April 2013
Our February half term holidays again proved extremely popular with visitor figures to the family workshops remaining very high at over 1200 visitors across the week!
Incredible Inventions was inspired by the wealth of objects in the collection that show the local developments in technology and art and which enabled us to invite budding new inventors to experiment with making balloon powered rockets, creating transport of the future from junk modelling materials (collected by staff!) and their own eye bending Op art piece.
Easter has so far been steadier numbers, which we expect due to families tending to go away on holiday over this period. Yet is hasn't stopped hundreds still coming to join in with creative workshops linked to the Wasted exhibition. Looking at the theme of body parts and their use in medical science, families have made their own eyeballs and watched Highly Sprung Performance Company as they used the dance and the human form as a way for children to engage with science. Here we encouraged our visitors to take part by making their own atom inspired hats in order to attend the atom party as part of the performance! Our layered learning approach to all our programming will see week two of the Easter workshops, focus on the use of sensory and open ended materials, resulting in workshops ranging from at squishy brains to making hands from Mod-roc.
Finally we are gearing up for a project that will be completed as part of the May family programme. Linked to our Caught in the Crossfire exhibition which looks at peace, conflict and reconciliation, we will be addressing this sensitive subject by creating a large-scale sculpture in the Covered Court area of the museum. Families are invited to help 'rebuild Dresden' our twin city, by creating a miniature city in 15 designated squares, representing the 15 square miles destroyed during the war. The installation will be filmed live on webcam so that families can check in over the week to see how it is going. Having been in contact with Dresden Stadt museum, we also hope the live link can be accessed by their visitors so they too can see how it's progressing. Herbert Media are helping with the technicalities including a time lapse film over the course of the four days to show through social media afterwards.
On going attendance to our early years Art Play and Creative Movement sessions, and planning for the Alice in wonderlands inspired family exhibition and family workshops coming this summer, has meant for a very busy start to 2013.
Melanie Corner - Family Learning Officer