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 […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →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. […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →Finally in our week of blogs from the Story Museum, Oxford… The mood tree As part of the Happy Museum project, we’re interested in learning about the impact we have on our visitor’s wellbeing, so we’ve introduced a Mood Tree (or rather, two) for a programme of public conversations with leading story experts, The Thousand […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →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 […]
Read More →The first of several blogs from the Happy Museum commissioned Story Museum… The Story Museum plans to open fully in 2015. At the moment, we’re still in our development phase ? what we like to call our ?pumpkin stage’? working on plans for the transformation of our building as well as our story collection and […]
Read More →Museums 2020 is the Museums Association’s initiative to create a bold vision for UK museums and their impact – the difference museums can have on individuals, communities, society and the environment. The consultation document and subsequent discussions both on and offline can be found here. The Happy Museum Project welcomes the Museums 2020 consultation as […]
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