The newly transformed National Museum of Scotland will house a brand new three-storey Learning Centre for primary and secondary school children when it opens later this year.
The learning experience is part of the £46.4m makeover and will have three studios, an auditorium, break-out spaces, packed-lunch areas and a cloakroom.
Schools visiting the museum can choose from a range of activities to participate in that bring the ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ to life.
There are incredible creations such as the natural world, art and fashion and Scottish history.
Students can enjoy expert-led workshops that will help them create their own exhibitions or even become space explorers. On top of this there will be exciting partnership workshops with Y-Dance, so they can create dances inspired by museum artefacts, and the British Geological Survey to examine disaster scenarios with erupting volcanos.
The secondary school programme also includes a conference on architecture with guest speaker Gareth Hoskins, architect for the new National Museum of Scotland.
Sally Manuireva, Director of Public Programmes, said: “This great museum, with its amazing collection of treasures, spans over 4.6 billion years and every corner of the golbe. The transformation of the museum has given us a fantastic opportunity to make a step-change in what we offer for schools. Inspired by our rich collections, the new programme will inform and engage school pupils from across Scotland and beyond.”
Stephen Allen, Head of Learning and Programmes, said: “We are breaking new ground having developed all our Primary and Secondary programmes around the key capacties of the Curriculum for Excellence. We know that the outstanding national collections can help teachers deliver many different aspects of the new curriculum, be it science and technology, architecture, history, design, art, fashion, the natural world and cultures and peoples from around the globe – our collections have it all.”
Visit www.nms.ac.uk/schools to find out more about the programmes available in all five Museums – the National Museum of Scotland, National War Museum, National Museum of Flight, National Museum of Rural Life and National Museum of Costume.
Self-guided visits to the National Museum of Scotland are free however there are charges for many of the workshops and activities. For more details and bookings contact 0131 247 4041 or schools@nms.ac.uk
