Wow, I can’t believe 2010 is nearly over! We’ve had such a busy and exciting year. 2010 saw us really get going with our themed weekend events. Throughout the year we’ve had many varied activities for all our visitors to take part in over the weekends. In January we kicked off with our Storytelling weekend, to tie in with National Storytelling week – and had Lady Godiva (the lovely Pru Poretta) come in and tell her story to the little ones.
In March Coventry Women’s Festival was once again held at the Museum, and we put together a Women’s History trail around the museum to go with it, as well as focusing on all the wonderful work women did during the Second World War in our Blitz area.
In July we had our first ever Land Speed Record weekend, which was a massive hit! We saw the competitive side of our visitors as they built and raced balloon powered cars! It went so well in fact that we had another Land Speed Record weekend in October, and this time the Bloodhound SSC team came in and brought Thrust SSC Driver Andy Green with them!
Throughout the summer holidays, visitors may have spotted us in the Ice Cream Dream Machines exhibition. Sadly we weren’t selling actual ice creams (although we looked as though we might be!), but we did have fun showing people how Ice cream was made in Victorian times, and challenging people to our fun Ice Cream quiz!
Drawing the year to a close we had a spooky Halloween in October, our Road Safety weekend in November, and we’ve just rounded off our Wartime Christmas weekends!
As well as all the weekend events we’ve put together this year we also developed our new Tactile Tour. We developed the tour for blind and partially sighted visitors and worked with some students from Hereward College, who gave us some excellent ideas. We were very pleased when we heard we’d been awarded funding from the CultureLink project to develop our tour and help improve access for blind and visually impaired visitors to the museum. As part of this exciting project we held a workshop where blind and partially sighted participants used cameras to photograph their experiences of the Tactile Tour. In December we showcased an amazing exhibition called My Mind’s Eye, which displayed some of their photos. It was a privilege to work with these people, their enthusiasm and open mindedness was incredible, and the photos they produced were amazing!
Looking forward now to 2011 and things won’t get any less busy! We’re stepping up the program of weekend events, repeating many of the popular ones from this year and adding in a new series of weekends which will take our visitors ‘Through The Decades’! Starting in January we will be taking visitors on a time travelling adventure that will visit a different decade each month throughout the year!
We also hope to develop the work we have begun with the Tactile Tour and photography workshop, and hope to continue improving access for all at the museum.
Thanks so much to everyone who came and took part in any of our activities this year! It’s been really fantastic and we hope to see many of you back again in 2011!
See what's on on 2011
