The Story Museum is one of 35 organisations to receive a Small Capital Grant in the current round of Arts Council England awards, announced in January. Our grant is worth £465,000, and designed to improve the sustainability of arts and cultural organisations across England. The funding will take us a step closer to the realisation […]

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Like all museums and arts venues, The Story Museum would not be able to function without its team of enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers. They have kept our exhibitions and events running smoothly, and many have also been able to put their unique talents to specific tasks: from creating signage for the building to mapping our […]

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The Story Museum is unique among the Happy Museum’s commissions: we are the only organisation which does not yet have a physical ‘museum’ space. So far we have run a pilot programme of events and exhibitions in Rochester House, our home on Pembroke Street and we were delighted to host the Happy Museum symposium here […]

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When Heritage Story Skills trainees celebrated the end of their course at The Story Museum, who better to present them with their certificates than Inspector Morse author Colin Dexter? The fifteen volunteer trainees are all Oxford-based, and not in education or employment. During the 12-week course they have learnt about Oxford’s rich story heritage, concentrating […]

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Children from five Oxford primary schools made masks for a Lottery-funded project, Make Me Smile, which showed how happiness can be expressed in many different ways. The Story Museum was delighted to open its doors to the public when local charity One-Eighty brought the exhibition to our Story Exchange space for three days, from 22-24 November. […]

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At the MA conference this year we led a workshop about Manchester Museum’s Playful Museum project. We wanted to demonstrate how we have begun to put the Happy Museum principles into practice using playful, participatory activities and asking colleagues to adopt our ?What if??’ approach.                 Our project […]

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We’re running a training programme at The Story Museum in heritage story skills. Fourteen adult volunteers, aged from 18 to 65, who are not currently working or studying, are taking part in the 12-week course, which has been made possible with support from Heritage Lottery Fund. They are from a variety of different backgrounds but […]

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Third in our series of blogs from the Story Museum, Oxford who will be hosting our meeting of Happy Museum Commissions on 15th November… Our first exhibition, ‘Other Worlds’ in May transported visitors to more than 20 different imaginary places turning our large dilapidated home into a giant story-related art installation. As part of their […]

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Ours is a dilapidated building, awaiting transformation. Health and safety is vital in our warren of empty rooms, uneven surfaces and unexpected corners. So we do need signs; but how to present them without seeming too official? The last thing any museum wants is for children to walk into a space with ?no’ written on […]

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