Collecting Stories Project

The Collecting Stories project was a strategic commissioning project funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Children Families and Schools.

The projects’ aim was to make Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths (STEM) more accessible to KS3 (11-14 year old) audiences by using museum collections to relate to STEM principles, concepts and real life experiences.

For two years Collecting Stories project had worked in partnership with non-science based museum collections across the nation. Each museum collaborated with a group of KS3 students to create a resource that would interest and engage other KS3 students in STEM themes.

We know that STEM topics provide a great way of looking at museum collections, but we also know that the best people to tell us what will appeal to a KS3 audience are KS3 students themselves. We worked directly with our target audience to ensure that the resources we created were at the right educational level, were engaging to KS3 and had the longevity to be used by the museum long after the project had come to an end.

The main foci of the project were to:

• Work in partnership, with museums, schools and STEM professionals
• Co-create with the intended audience
• Bring to life the STEM in museum collection

The projects' skills and lessons learnt will be gathered into a toolkit for other museums to access.  The toolkit aims to share the skills and lessons learned and to give the guidance and tools to any museum collection wanting to run a similar project.

The Collecting Stories toolkit will be released late 2011.  For further information about the project or the toolkit please contact:

Science Museum Outreach
Tel: 020 7942 4707
Fax: 020 7942 4730
outreach@sciencemuseum.org.uk

Collecting Stories Project Partners

Museums:
Beamish Museum, Durham
Brooklands Museum, Weybridge
Captain Cook’s Birthplace Museum, Middlesborough
Clarke Hall Museum, Wakefield
Great North Museum: Hancock, Tyne and Wear (North East regional partner museum)
Hawley Collections at Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield
Museum of Hartlepool, Hartlepool
National Motor Museum, Hampshire
National Railway Museum, York (Yorkshire regional partner museum)
River and Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames
Royal Marines Museum, Portsmouth (South East regional partner museum)
Ryedale Folk Museum, Yorkshire
Thackray Museum, Leeds
The Historic Chatham Dockyard, Kent
Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, Reading

Schools:
ALNS Business & Enterprise College, Portsmouth
Charter Academy, Portsmouth
Gunnersbury Catholic School, London
Huntington School, York
Millthorpe School, York
St, Cuthbert’s Catholic High School, Newcastle

STEM professionals:
Billy Huang, University of York
Dr Chris Carbone, Institute of Zoology
Chris Cooksey
Dr Jasper Graham-Jones, Plymouth University
Kevin Bamford, Kelham Island Museum
Rebecca Broadbent, STEM Shropshire
Richard Atkins, Engineering Consultants
Prof. Rik Brydson, University of Leeds
Ross W. Harrington, Newcastle University
Selina Hurley, Science Museum
Simon Cran, Bombardier Transportation
Steve Humble, Institute of mathematics & its application
Thomas James, Imperial College

Other organisations:
The Science Links in Museum Education (SLIME)
Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums  
Science & Technology Education Around Museums (STEAM)

The Collecting Stories project was funded jointly by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Children, Schools and Families as part of the Strategic Commissioning Programme for Museum and Gallery Education.