Last updated 12:41, Monday, 07 April 2008

For those Cumbrians who can’t visit Tullie House, the museum takes its collection, exhibitions and projects out to them. It’s the chance for residents in nursing homes and village communities to reminisce about their experiences and for school children to learn about the county’s rich history.

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Simon Gill with son Jake, three and Charlie Halliday, four, share a book at the exhibition

Tullie House is one of the pioneers nationally of museum outreach work, visiting schools and community groups across the county, southern Scotland and into Northumberland.

Three and a half years of work by outreach officers Chris Smith, who works with schools, and Susan Child, who works with community groups, is celebrated with an exhibition, “Reaching Out”, which runs until Sunday, April 13.

Reaching Out uses a colourful mixture of video, audio, photographs and artworks to tell the story behind the various programmes that Tullie House has carried out with local school children and community groups.

“It’s really about how the museum interacts with people,” says Chris. “We live in a rural county where lots of the museum’s users live away from us and it can be quite difficult for them to come and visit us here. Outreach makes it easier to access what we do at the museum.

“It encourages people to come back with their families, it really makes a contribution.”

Chris describes the work she and Susan do as “cutting edge”; it’s not something that every museum in the country does – yet.

“It’s growing but it’s still relatively new, but very successful – and we started it from scratch,” she says. Their work is funded in part by MLA Initiative and Renaissance North West.

Chris’s exciting school-based sessions include slavery, Vikings, law and order and Victorians (to name only a few), delivered in lots of different ways, such as video conferencing, loan boxes – items from Tullie House’s collection – and interaction – like “Garbology” archaeological sand boxes.

Chris travels to schools as far apart as Waberthwaite, near Millom, Lochmaben and Haltwhistle. Much of her work fits in with Key Stage 1 and 2 of the schools’ curriculum but she also spends one week a year delivering assembly talks.

Susan’s community work is centred much more on Carlisle as she often works with older people, or on family activity days in the community. “We really try to get people involved with what we’re doing,” says Chris.

Projects are often based around exhibitions at Tullie House, including “Table Manners” – where care home residents were invited to see the ceramics exhibition for themselves, then create their own tableware – and “Life Boxes” on which Susan worked with Sure Start to enable families to share special memories and work with a local artist to display some of the objects that reminded them of key times the family have shared.

One of the most fun projects is Garbology, linking archaeology and modern ideas about rubbish and recycling.

“It’s really about what people bury or throw away. The children can excavate a bucket of sand and see if they can guess what age it is, or what it is.”

Even though Chris’s (and Susan’s) work is funded, schools choose what services they take partly on cost, as well as what fits in with their curriculum, and what projects Chris is covering that year. She produces a newsletter letting schools know what’s going on but teachers also phone up to ask for visits.

Chris and Susan are sensitive to the work of other museums and outreach officers.

For Chris’s slavery project last year – to mark the 200th anniversary of parliament’s abolition of the slave trade – she used objects from Tullie House’s collection associated with slavery, such as coffee, tobacco and sugar, rather than tackling the county’s direct links with the trade, which was more Whitehaven’s remit.

Sometimes Susan and Chris work together, such as on their 2005 World War II projects, bringing older people who remembered the war into schools for reminisce sessions that benefit young and old.

Reaching Out includes recordings Susan has made – an important piece of oral history.

Funding has been secured for another year and forthcoming projects include the Fifties and Sixties, inspired by work Chris has done with Caldew Lea School and McVities, which is close by.

A celebration takes place on Wednesday for people involved with the outreach work, as well as staff from other regional museums to see what Tullie House’s outreach officers do.

“On a personal note, I just want to say to the schools how much I’ve enjoyed meeting them, learning alongside them and having a laugh,” says Chris. “I’m really looking forward to working with more in the future.”

Hilary Wade, director of Tullie House Museum says: “Reaching Out is great as it really shows visitors a side to the museum they may not necessarily know about.

“Our schools and community outreach programmes have been hugely successful over the last three years, and we are very proud of the fact that we can take the museum out into the communities and schools, making the museum more accessible.

Chris Smith can be contacted on 01228 618762. Susan Child can be reached on 01228 618763.

n Reaching Out is in the Special Exhibitions Gallery at Tullie. Carlisle residents can see the exhibition for free if they have a Tullie Card, which is available free of charge at the museum’s reception desk with proof of address such as a council tax or utility bill.