SCHOOLCHILDREN are being given the chance to become young history detectives and delve into Northumberland’s industrial and social past in a new scheme being run at a leading visitor attraction.
Dusty documents, old photographs and historical records have been turned into learning tools for youngsters visiting the £16m Woodhorn Museum and Archives Centre near Ashington.
They are being used to help inquisitive school pupils find out more about the region’s past, including key aspects of its once-mighty coal mining and fishing industries.
Each year thousands of young people are introduced to Woodhorn through its extensive education programme, with schools from all over the North East visiting the museum and archives. Now, thanks to funding from the Heritage Lottery and the work of the museum’s Working Lives project team, a number of new workshops have been developed for young visitors.
Staff have dipped into the huge collection of archives to get inspiration from its papers, documents and photographs as a basis for the new activities. Understandably – as Woodhorn is a former working pit – two of the workshops look at mining-related themes.
One gives the children the chance to play detective and learn more about one of Northumberland’s worst mining disasters, while the other engages them in debate and discovery about the issues surrounding the miners’ strikes.
Another workshop, Let’s Go Fishing, uses a range of maps, photographs, newspapers and more to help youngsters learn about life – and death – in the county’s fishing communities.
Yesterday Grace Dunne, the Working Lives project education assistant at the museum, said: “These archive workshops give schoolchildren the chance to learn about, and hopefully be inspired by, the stories of ordinary working people in Northumberland. Pupils work with real archival documents, and so far they have been fascinated by the photographs and documents I’ve shown them.”
As well as the fishing and mining themes, for this term only, youngsters can also take part in a workshop examining the history and industry of Seaton Sluice.
Other Working Lives workshops which have been developed at Woodhorn look at the history of shopping and entertainment.
