Case studies

More case studies of successful learning activity and links with schools, nurseries and other learning institutions can be found on the Learn with Museums website.

An Emotional Journey for Mansfield Museum

Mansfield Museum staff had been involved in Creative Partnerships (thegovernment’s creative learning programme coordinated by Arts Council England) and had been trying to organise a project at a local primary school. After one abortive attempt, the museum began work with secondary school students in a project where they would develop and deliver an exhibition of contemporary art at the museum. This would include confirming the theme for the exhibition, commissioning artists or identifying artworks, laying out the exhibition and helping to organise the official launch.


The result of the project is a stunning exhibition of a wide range of contemporary art forms which are all thought provoking and take on the theme of ‘an emotional journey’. The exhibition works well in the museum, where many of the other displays are more traditional andinclude different styles of art work and pottery. It is a challenging display and has gained many complements from visitors.

The project was a challenge for both museum and school. Find out more in the full case study below.

An Emotional Journey case study (27 kb)

Surviving Newark Air Museum

Newark Air Museum’s collection, as one would expect, is aircraft based and provides both significant challenges and great opportunities for school visits to the site, something Howard Heeley, museum trustee, was keen to explore.

The 2006 –’07 Strategic Commissioning programme focused on helping museums address the themes of citizenship and diversity and Newark Air Museum worked with MLA East Midlands’ museum education worker (MEW), Davey Ivens, to devise an extremely creative project using the resources on site to develop a ‘survival’ activity. The half day session is designed to support Key Stage 2 citizenship and history curricula.


The new activities use different areas and items on site to create an interactive session for teachers and students at the museum, including team exercises, classroom based activity and a host of activities to get the students thinking.

In ‘Survival’ the students become survivors of an aircraft crash and have to negotiate their way through a series of challenges to complete tasks so they can reach the rescue point.

The resources were developed with the National Curriculum in mind, but aimed to give a creative response to citizenship and the resources available on the museum site. The aim was also to do something that didn’t focus so heavily on the Second World War; a topic already commands many school resources. 

Survival is designed as a teacher led activity at the museum and all participants receive a certificate and a free visit to the museum to encourage them to visit with family and friends. The pack has proved extremely popular with students and schools and from three school visits in 2006, the museum enjoyed ten in 2007 with more booked for 2008.

Find out more in the full case study below:
Newark Air Museum 'Survival' case study (31 kb)

Lazarus Loans

Funded by Renaissance East Midlands, this project rescued more than 8,000 artefacts destined for disposal to create a treasure trove of resource boxes for local schools and community groups covering hundreds of years of history.

The project worked with local teachers to develop the resources that accompanied the boxes and helped to develop closer links with a number of Nottingham schools, some in the city’s most deprived areas. In the first two school terms the loans boxes were used by 4,000 city students and members of three community groups. Each box has a three level approach: starting points and questions; suggestions for resources, further activities and more detail; and Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) planning sheets so that different users can work in their favoured way.   

The current boxes include the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Romans in Britain, Africa inspires (visual art), the World War One, and History Mystery.

The response has been phenomenal from all the users and new loans boxes are being developed to reflect other periods and curriculum areas.  Since the pilot, where schools could borrow the boxes for free, many schools have returned to pay to borrow the boxes. Both teachers and students are delighted, a teacher said: “It becomes personal to them – a chance to see and touch articles first hand – real articles not copies.  I think it will have inspired them to find out more and developed their enquiry skills.” 

 A Key Stage 2 student was inspired: “The best thing about the loans box was the activities because it was fun and it helped me learn lots of things while I was having fun, so I think that helped me a lot, if I wasn’t having as much fun I probably wouldn’t have learned as much.”

View a full copy of the case study:Lazarus Loans case study (55 kb)

Fosse Primary School Museum Club

The Leicester Fosse Primary School’s museum club developed its own local history museum in the school which was opened during Museum and Gallery Month, May 2006.  The nine primary students worked with a Renaissance staff member, to create their own museum from scratch.

They researched local history, spoke to experts and local residents to gather their information and artefacts and they visited two local museums to find out how museums worked, learned curatorial techniques and what all the staff in museums do.

The after school club then designed and created its own museum with all the club members taking on different roles for this and the museum grand opening and open evening.  Parents, friends, school staff and local museum staff attended the museum opening and were delighted and impressed with the displays and the work of the students.

The project enthused the participants about what museums are and the potential they provide and prompted one participant to plan to create a similar club, if one didn’t exist, at the secondary school she was moving to for the next school year.

The project met a number of learning outcomes for the students, but also for the museum staff, experts and especially the local residents who were delighted by the interest of young people in the history of the local area.

View the full case study: Fosse Primary School museum case study (38 kb)

In Your Shoes

Northampton Museum worked with a group of teachers to develop online education resources linked to its designated boot and shoe collection. 

The resulting teachers’ and interactive student materials are available through the Learn with Museums website and cover a range of Key Stages and curriculum links to connect footwear with culture, history and even weather and climate.

Schools groups already go to visit the museum’s collection, but these resources provide classroom activities to complement the visits or for schools unable to visit.  Pupils can learn about elephant boots, foot binding in China and Queen Victoria’s wedding shoes.  They can build their own shoe and link shoes to the places they come from in a global game. All the pupils’ resources are backed up by a comprehensive teachers’ pack.

View the full case study:In Your Shoes case study (37 kb)