We are part of the Wild Escape project
Fantastic news!
The Investigate Learning team are excited to be part of the Wild Escape project this year. We will be hosting school groups, community groups, family events and an Earth Day extravaganza at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life.
Watch this space for more information as we release our events!!
The Wild Escape is a major new project led by Art Fund uniting hundreds of museums with schools and families in a celebration of UK wildlife and creativity.
Taking place from January to July 2023, The Wild Escape invites children to find a favourite animal in their local museum and create an artwork imagining its journey to a natural habitat.
The pictures and stories children create will be brought together in a collective work of art that imagines a better future for the wildlife on our doorstep, launched online and in venues across the UK on Earth Day 2023.
The Wild Escape is led by Art Fund alongside hundreds of museums, artists and environmentalists, in partnership with WWF, the RSPB, National Trust and English Heritage.
The Wild Escape is made possible thanks to funding from Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants, with additional support from Kusuma Trust, Foyle Foundation and a group of generous individuals and trusts.
The Wild Escape is inspired by Wild Isles, a landmark BBC series exploring the flora and fauna of the UK.
The Wild Escape is made possible by lead support from Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants, with additional support from Art Fund and a group of generous individuals and trusts.
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Sandford Award for Investigate Lincoln Castle!
Great news! We’re excited to announce that the Lincoln Castle Investigate Learning team have received the Sandford Award for heritage learning!! For each of the assessment categories, we received the highest score, which is great news for our enthusiastic learning team. We’re so pleased to share this amazing site with our learning visitors.
Sandford Award Lead Assessor wrote:
Lincoln Castle thoroughly deserves its second Sandford Award in recognition of the unique and compelling insight it offers visitors into a series of locally and nationally significant historical phenomena, ranging from the medieval world and the Magna Carta to the treatment of prisoners in Victorian England.
The learning team has demonstrated impressive creativity, resourcefulness and analytical dexterity in using the site’s long and complex story to bring into focus key historical themes that relate directly to the content of the school curriculum. In so doing, they have created both a highly stimulating and memorable learning experience delivered in the most authentic of settings.
Visitors cannot help but be captivated by the breadth of history on display here and by the site’s skill in bringing it vividly to life in a way that will resonate with learners for years to come.
This recognition builds upon our Sandford Award success last year for The Collection Museum and we enjoy meeting all of our learning participants!
The Power of the Sun Animation
We are excited to launch our new Fusion energy animation and are lucky to have Hannah Brown as a member of our learning team. Her animation brings to life this current environmental topic and encourages us to ponder both the past and the future! We even have a Tokamak physicist speaking on the film – very inspiring!
We are linking to our prehistoric gold artefacts on site and from November 10th to February 20th we also have the British Museum Spotlight loan exhibition Gathering Light: a Bronze Age golden sun. We are going all bling and showing off the amazing Shropshire Sun Pendant!
Our prehistory workshops will include a tour of the exhibition but we thought we’d showcase the importance of the sun in this new Power of the Sun learning resource.
Science teachers (primary and secondary) will find this free resource a great introduction to this physics topic too.
We hope you enjoy it.
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Prehistory workshops shine bright this autumn!
The team are busily taking bookings for all our offers and will be introducing a special prehistory workshop day for Key Stage 1 & 2 in the Autumn.
We are excited to be linking new sessions to the fantastic visiting exhibition Gathering light: A Bronze golden sun – a British Museum Spotlight Loan. It will feature this 3000 year old extraordinary Shropshire Sun Pendant. Glittering objects will be on site between 11th November 2022 to 20th February 2023.
Workshops will involve museum investigations, beaker pottery making and our archaeology dig challenge.
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Hidden Lindum Colonia – Visit Posterngate
We are excited to include a visit to Posterngate within our new Hidden Lindum Colonia project. The project will eventually showcase twelve sites of Roman Lincoln and form a digital and real tour of the city.
The Posterngate site was uncovered during excavations in the 1970s. It was a gateway that gave access to Roman Lincoln from the river. It is widely thought that the route was used by merchants and traders when Lincoln’s waterside was a bustling port.
For Summer 2022 we are excited to bring you our new guided tours of Posterngate:
- Guided tours will begin with a talk about the Hidden Lindum Colonia project and set the scene for Posterngate in the main gallery of The Collection Museum (10-15 minutes)
- We will then walk to Posterngate on Saltergate (5 minutes away) to enter the hidden gateway
- A talk at the Posterngate site (30 minutes)
- Guided tours will end at the Posterngate site
Please note:
- The tours involve walking from the museum to the site across two roads.
- Posterngate is situated 5 metres below ground level and can only be reached down a stone staircase.
Tour dates for Summer 2022
On the following dates there will be a guided tour at 11am and at 2pm.
Places are limited to 20 visitors per tour.
Tickets are £4.10 and require pre booking online or at the Collection reception
- Monday 24th October
- Friday 2nd December
More dates will follow for Autumn/Winter.
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Get creative this summer!
Join us this summer across the sites for a variety of crafts, creative arts and you can even choose to do your Arts Award Discover mini qualification.
On each of the Get Creative days there will be something different to do linked to the exhibitions and sites e.g. Microworlds exhibition at The Collection and the Our Patch of Earth project at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life!
- Crafts £3
- Arts Award £10 – charge includes the Get Creative Discover Award pack, certificate submission plus one craft
- Free drawing and painting
All events 10am to 3.30pm
All children must have adult supervision
Arts Award Discover
If you are aged 6 to 14 you can complete your Arts Award Discover qualification during the summer.
Get Creative Arts Award Discover packs can be purchased from the learning team on any of the Get Creative event days.
You do not need to do your full award on site with us but may want our help so please pop in on any Get Creative day to find out more and we can help with ideas. You might have a preferred theme from our event days – see below.
You would then need to bring in evidence of your creative arts practice in your chosen art form (e.g. a painting, a song, a dance, a story etc) and have completed the Get Creative Arts Award Discover pack by the end of August. The learning team will liaise with you for your contact details as we will send off for your certificates to Trinity and let you know when they arrive with us to be collected at your convenience.
For each event day there is a slightly different theme for the craft activities based upon different aspects of the exhibitions to ensure that you have lots of options across the summer!
Dates, sites and themes for the Get Creative
- Wednesday 27th July – Get Creative @ Collection Museum – Microworlds and 3d modelling
- Friday 29th July – Get Creative @ Museum of Lincs Life – Our Patch of Earth exhibition, planting and creative arts flowers
- Thursday 4th August – Get Creative @ Usher Gallery – Environments, landscapes and clay tiles (using natural foraged materials)
- Friday 5th August – Get Creative @ Museum of Lincs Life – Our Patch of Earth exhibition, planting and garden creatures and birds
- Wednesday 10th August – Get Creative @ Collection Museum – Microworlds and 3d modelling
- Friday 12th August – Get Creative @ Museum of Lincs Life – Our Patch of Earth exhibition, planting and fantasy garden creatures
- Thursday 18th August – Get Creative @ Usher – Identity and portraits – clay heads and self-portraiture.
- Friday 19th August – Get Creative @ Museum of Lincs Life – Our Patch of Earth exhibition, planting and garden creatures and birds
- Wednesday 24th August – Get Creative @ Collection Museum- Microworlds and 3d modelling
- Friday 26th August – Get Creative @ Museum of Lincs Life- Our Patch of Earth exhibition, planting and fantasy garden creatures
Our patch of earth project
The Our Patch of Earth Exhibition and Creative Arts Garden project is underway and has been very exciting this year.
Artist in Residence, Esteban Peña Parga, explored our relationship with the natural environment with his focus on native wildflowers for the Gatehouse Gallery exhibition. Pop along and see it until 30 August 2022.
Using innovative painting and drawing techniques, as well as new media and technology in relation to the use of colour and light, this exhibition will evolve as winter turns into spring! Esteban will be on-site to talk to visitors about his practice and we will add to the exhibition during his residency.
Our new potting bench and planter area has been set and we have started gardening at all our holiday events and learning workshops! We link to Victorian gardening ideas and are developing ideas and plans for our ‘secret’ garden area based upon sustainable and environmentally friendly planting.
We welcome enquiries from schools for school learning sessions (Victorians and/or Creative Arts) as well as having our family activities school holiday event days.
Watch this space for our updates to the schedule of events…
Events schedule
Kitchen cupboard medicine workshop day
Using everyday herbs and spices to make simple remedies
- Saturday 30 July
- 10am to 3pm
- £25
- Age 18+
- Limited places available and all places need to be booked in advance.
How to book
Book a place either in person at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life reception or emailing the Investigate team (who will then phone you to take payment).
For more information please email investigate-learning@lincolnshire.gov.uk
Just bring Lunch (there are shops near buy) an apron and notebook.
In this workshop we will explore the medicinal virtues of some culinary herbs and spices and use them to make small tablets or troches, make a healing electuary from dried powdered herbs and dried fruit and discover how to make infused herbal oils from hedgerow and garden plants for use in muscle rubs and salves.
Spend a day learning how to make these simple and effective everyday remedies, you will take home a cream, and electuary and some troches. All ingredients and equipment will be provided together with handouts.
Debbie Lincoln BSc (Hons) is a Medical herbalist and a member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. She currently practices in and around Lincoln, Sleaford, Newark and the surrounding areas, visiting clients in their own homes. She also runs workshops on foraging for medicinal plants and gives walks and talks about herbal medicine. Debbie has been a fantastic source of knowledge for the Our Patch of Earth garden project as we explore what native plants to include. For more information please see her website at www.herbwise.co.uk.
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Have an Usher Gallery exhibition in your school!
That’s what Waddington All Saints Primary have just done!
Wow what a response from the pupils! Using our new Creative Arts kits they set up their own art studio. What an impression it made.
The pupils absolutely loved it and told us it felt like they were in a real gallery and they can’t wait to visit us at the Usher.
It was great to hear how they had linked the art works to their history and geography studies and responded to the De Wint painting of Lincoln Year 4 Teacher and Art and Design lead, Victoria Maycock piloted our new loans kits and told us that when the pupils entered the room they were ‘in awe’.
It was a fantastic way to introduce the art works and find out how they made the pupils feel.
What a great result!!
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Our new Patch of Earth Investigate Learning project
The Our Patch of Earth project has had a wonderful start at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life and the exhibition will now continue until the end of August.
Our Victorian ‘secret garden’ plans are moving ahead and we have had visitors busy planting as part of schools workshops and holiday events! Great stuff.
The themes of the project are linked to environmental responsibility, wellbeing and community.
Our new Victorian Life workshop sessions have been great fun so let us know how we can link Victorians and creative arts for your projects and activities.
Adults may also like to volunteer for this garden project so contact us for more information.
See the details below and signup for our newsletter to know how our project progresses and how your pupils could be involved.
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Autumn is coming – and so are our workshops
We are looking forward to welcoming you back for our workshops across the sites this autumn. Demand has been very high and we have reviewed our capacity and learning spaces. Access for some of our offers will be limited until next year so please check with us with regard to topic availability. In particular we are unable to offer Egyptians and Greeks at The Collection Museum and the Castle self-led all-inclusive this year.
Our loans kit offer (Investigate Learning on Tour) – see the updated list – has been increased and during the Autumn we will also be adding our new creative arts kits and even a Tudor banquet experience kit! We will also be launching our new ‘Learning from the Castle Walls’ films, focussing on the Norman period for each key stage – they are in the editing suite right now (image above)!
We are launching a new environmental garden project at Museum of Lincolnshire Life called ‘Our Patch of Earth’ which links to the site Victorian history and creative arts. There are opportunities for schools to be involved so watch out for further details.
To find out more about our learning offers please sign up for our newsletter using the form below.