Museum bus wins prestigious heritage education award
A county council mobile museum has just won a prestigious award for demonstrating quality and excellence in educational services.
The regional Museum on the Move project has received the Heritage Education Trust’s Sandford Award following the judges’ visit to the Warwickshire bus last month.
The project, managed by Marches Curators group, is a partnership of senior museum officers in the rural counties of the West Midlands and Wolverhampton Arts and Museums and includes three buses across the region.
Warwickshire’s bus is a resource shared with Worcestershire County Council Museum Services and the other buses are shared between Herefordshire and Shropshire and Staffordshire and the Black Country conurbation (Walsall, Sandwell and Wolverhampton).
The Museum on the Move bus is designed to reach places that other museums just can’t by taking to the road and bringing the exhibition to anywhere that has space to park a medium-sized bus. So far the bus has visited venues such as Care Homes, Schools, Community Centres, Festivals, Leisure Centres and Country Parks, amongst many others.
The Museum on the Move has a new exhibition each year. This year’s exhibition is entitled ‘Remember - Your Memories Matter’ and previous exhibitions have covered topics as diverse as rivers, 1977 and ‘Our Games’.
The Sandford Award judges said of the initiative: "The project invites children and others to experience a small museum on their doorstep. It is a resource that supports the sustenance of positive communities and develops positive attitudes towards museums.
“This quite unique resource is the hub of a dynamic and exciting partnership between local authorities, which should continue to be developed, celebrated and resourced. All staff associated with "Museum on the Move" should be proud of their contribution to an amazing resource which goes more than the extra mile."
Laura Pye, Head of Heritage Education at Warwickshire County Council said: “It’s great news that the Museum on the Move has won this award. It shows how much Heritage Education has changed over the last 10 year and how it is now as much about outreach and accessibility as traditional visits to historic homes and places of interest.”
For further information on this press release, contact Laura Pye at Heritage Education, St John’s Museum, Warwick 01926 412034 or email laurapye@warwickshire.gov.uk