Work Experience at Chippenham Museum

As schools are returning for a new year, we thought we would take the opportunity to look back and reflect for a moment on the end of the last academic year.

Over 5 weeks in June and July the museum welcomed nineteen year 10 and 12 students from our local secondary schools for work experience. This is always an exciting opportunity for the museum to share its work and collection of over 40,000 objects, giving young people an in depth look behind the scenes.
We found that many of the students had not visited the museum since they had left primary school, so it was interesting to discover what objects they were most expecting to see and what they were surprised to find in the collection.

Most were expecting medieval, Victorian and war related objects but were surprised to find objects that they recognised from their “own childhood.” They were also not expecting objects telling local stories around race, gender and sexual orientation. Such as placards collected from Black Lives Matter protests held in the town and the towns first Pride Day. This opened opportunities to discuss the role of museums and how they are more than homes to collections and stops on the tourist trail and actively relate to the diversity of its community and engage with wider society and global concerns.

During their week the students were all introduced to the rich history of the town and surrounding area through an in-depth exploration of the museum galleries and stores. They took part in guided walks around the town and helped at several events including the town’s celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the D Day landings.

Images showing the procession in the High Street during the D Day 80th anniversary celebration. Taken by student Laurie Spurway as part of his project to document the work experience week.

Part of the week was given over to project work giving the students the opportunity to explore how we make our collection available to an online audience. Students learned about different social media platforms, how we can interact with our audience, and how they can engage with the museum and our collection. From this, they created their own photographs and captions, in which you can see below in their social media mock-ups.

Images of students’ social media mock-ups, using images and captions produced by them.

At the end of each work experience week, we asked the students to look back and reflect on what they had learnt this included…

“How a museum works to preserve its collection, but also why it does this”

“Most of the aspects of running a museum”

“How to store and protect artifacts”

“That bugs can eat artifacts and certain boxes can be bad for things”

“How much care is taken to store objects and artefacts”

“Living in a town/knowing about town history can help people feel part of a community”

“More about Chippenham and a taste of working life”

Work Experience Students researching for their project. Taken by student Laurie Spurway as part of his project to document the work experience week.

We wish all our work experience students and their peers the very best as they start another busy year and look forward to seeing them exploring the museum galleries again soon.