International Museum Day 2025: The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities
To celebrate International Museum Day 2025, the museum's Creative Learning Team profile some of their recent community work. The team are passionate about creativity and self-expression, and the different ways that being creative can empower individuals and communities to tell their own stories and share their experiences. Responding to and re-interpreting our museum collections can give opportunities for new reflections on histories and the chance to include new perspectives that help shape our shared future.
Art Angel Community Collaborative project
Working collaboratively with Art Angel, we offered a group of adults the opportunity to engage in a mixture of creative activities. The project was designed to develop and expand on their own artistic practice and included print making, photography, painting and collage. The project aimed to support people in the local community to improve their mental health and wellbeing through active participation in the arts. Access to the Museum's collection, and a studio to create in provides the participants a space for expressing emotions, reducing stress, connecting with others and developing self confidence in a supportive environment.
Wild Escapes Eco School
The ‘Wild Escapes Eco School' was a week-long project open to children of various ages. It created an open forum for children to think about the environment, get creative and become nature champions! Artists, curators and museum educators led hands-on activities including sculpture, printmaking, creative writing and museum tours, encouraging children to share their own views and to make their own creative responses to climate change inspired by our museum collection. The sessions included tours from our natural history Curators, an Ecologist, and members from a local art festival. Through this access to informal learning the children were given the opportunity to explore different career and job options for the future.
RSPB Arrivals and Departures project with Scrap Antics
The Creative Learning team worked in collaboration with two local organisations, ‘How it Felt’ and Scrap Antics to deliver a project by Scrap Antics and The RSPB called Arrivals and Departures. Families from a New Scots and Scots background explored the theme of human migration, represented by birds who migrate annually to Scotland and the UK. The group produced poetry, prints and puppetry as well as a collaborative wall mural. The families were then given the opportunity to communicate and share their stories. To find out more about ScrapAntics and to get involved, visit www.scrapantics.co.uk.
Comic creation workshops with Comics Youth
The Creative Learning team worked in partnership with Comics youth SCIO to deliver free comic workshops during school holidays. Children and young people worked with our artists to create and design their own comics and developed stories and drawings inspired the museum's collection. Workshops consisted of digital presentation, graphic design, creative writing, gallery tours, discussion and sharing of work. These workshops have been crafted to develop new skills and friendships and to support young people to access cultural venues independently.
A Weather Eye, partnership project with Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust
Drawing inspiration from the exhibition A Weather Eye at The McManus: Dundee's Art Gallery & Museum, the museum's Creative Learning Team delivered the fifth partnership project with THAT (Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust).
The project was co-designed to provide person-centred learning experiences and creative participation for people affected by long-term health conditions such as stroke, acquired brain injury, chronic pain and others. In this eight-week block participants experimented with a wide range of fine art and mark making techniques, including working with collage, chalks, oil pastels, paints and combinations of these materials to explore texture within their work. Each participant showcased their work in a sharing for family and friends at a project celebration, with the display then open to the public during museum opening hours on Friday 28th March, Monday 31st March and Tuesday 1st April in the museum's Learning Studio.
