“My message to you”

Thumbs Up World are a wonderful organisation. They designed our children’s guide books, and also sit on our community panel.

They’ve asked us to share the following message:

““My message to you”..creating a community message of hope. Please do share this we can get as many messages as possible ?.

We are creating a combined “our message to all”.

Adults, children and teenagers are writing their reassuring message / letter to someone important to them (sibling, friend, child, parent, grandparent etc) about what’s happening now and why & how it will be ok & anything else they want to say to them. And we are going to put them all together (anonymous) and create a combined message to use in various ways which can help others. And the message you or your child / teenager write is also something you / your child can keep to share as they want. It would be amazing to have a range of messages to others and for us to create a community message of hope during these times.

We have seen such lovely messages so far and we want to keep them coming.

Please email me at thumbsupworld2016@gmail.com with your / your children’s letter or message or if you have any questions.

Nobody’s details or information will be shared unless you ask for it to be and please don’t put any very personal information in the letter or message. Thank you so much ?”

https://thumbsupworlduk.org/

2020 / Children's Activities / Community - 04/27/2020

Contemporary Collecting and Covid 19

At Crawley Museum we are committed to continued work with our local communities,  including  engagement with the museum’s collections and collecting contemporary items that represent Crawley’s life and diversity.

In this unique time we are keen to capture Crawley’s experiences of Covid 19, the lockdown and any impacts that it may have.  However, at present, we know that you have more  important things to do such as maintaining your health and communicating with family and friends.

Once the museum is back up and running, which we hope to be soon, we will be putting the official call out for your memories, archives, pictures, and objects that represent coronavirus and the lockdown to you and Crawley. In the meantime, please hold on to the things that you would like to donate and we will start collecting them from you once it is safe to do so.

Please stay safe and we will see you soon.

2020 / Community / Crawley History / Crawley Memories / Museum objects - 04/25/2020

Crawley’s Collections Revealed

Display cabinet with teddy bear, milk bottle, cruet set, trophy and toy robot, with handwritten labels.

In 2019 Crawley Museum was awarded a grant from Arts Council England for a new project – Crawley’s Collections Revealed.
This 18 month project runs from November 2019 until April 2021.
It has been doing two main things:

1 Going through our collections to identify things that are not relevant to the history of Crawley. We will offer them to other museums. This will make room for more objects which reflect the history of Crawley and its communities.

2 Working with members of the community to select items from our collections that are not currently on display. Project participants have been creating their own text labels. The items are being exhibited in a project display cabinet. There will also be an exhibition about the project in 2021. Members of the community will help to create this.

Because the museum is currently closed to the public due to Covid-19 we are posting images of the objects online. We are inviting people to create labels by commenting. We will then use these comments to create a display.

We are looking forward to being able to run more face to face sessions at a later date!

Crawley’s Collections Revealed – label an object! (1)

Crawley’s Collections Revealed – label an object! (2)

Crawley’s Collections Revealed – label an object! (3)

Crawley’s Collections Revealed – label an object! (4)

Crawley’s Collections Revealed – label an object! (5)

2020 / Community / Crawley's Collections Revealed / Exhibition / Museum objects - 04/01/2020

Crawley’s Collections Revealed – label an object! (1)

As part of our Crawley’s Collections Revealed project (funded by Arts Council England), we’re meant to be running face to face sessions with people, looking at objects and writing labels.

Obviously we can’t do the face to face bit right now, but we can still show you objects and ask you to tell us what you’d put on a label.

It can be something factual, something the object makes you think of or remember, or even a drawing or poem. It’s up to you.

This week’s object is a milk bottle. Apparently R.G. Law was known as ‘The Midnight Milkman’ because of his erratic delivery times!

Let us know in the comments what you’d put on a label for this object?

Milk bottle

(The writing on the bottle reads: “This bottle and milk is the property of R.G. Law, 16 Brighton Road, Crawley. Stolen if delivered by another dairyman.”)

Crawley’s Collections Revealed

2020 / Community / Crawley Memories / Crawley Museum / Crawley's Collections Revealed / Museum objects - 03/23/2020

It’s Playtime At Crawley Museum

Teddy Bear in doll's cot

On October 30th Crawley Museum will be opening their latest exhibition, and for it to be a success they need everybody’s help.

To make it work the museum is asking everybody who can to come along and share their memories of the toys they loved as children. If you still have that old teddy, a doll, or train that made you happy when you were small, Crawley Museum would dearly love to be able to borrow it for the duration of the exhibition.

The exhibition itself includes display boards, video, and toys which you can touch and play with. But what it’s really all about is your own memories of dolls, bears, Meccano, Hornby and Airfix.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the toys which you remember, they’d still love to hear your stories of the way you used to play, or indeed the way you still play today.

If you have an abiding memory of a much loved toy, or you have a toy which you are prepared to lend to Crawley Museum for other people to see and enjoy, then please get in touch. If you are in a position to make a loan of your cherished toy, don’t worry! The toys which you provide won’t be among those which will be used in the toy box and played with by other visitors, instead your loans will be carefully put in a cabinet where they can be seen, but not touched.

For more details on how you can get involved with the Toys exhibition, what it involves, times and dates simply ask at the museum reception, call 01293 539088, or send an email to office@crawleymuseums.org

2019 / Community / Crawley Memories / Crawley Museum / Exhibition - 10/02/2019

Make Your Own Factory 2019

Photograph of children's craft activity with factory buildinh made out of cardboard boxes, model people, a tree covered in sequins and some plastic dinosaurs.
Children’s Activity

Are you looking for something to do this summer?
Why not come to our Learning Space and add to our factory?

Open Wednesday to Saturday 10.30-4.
Sunday 2-4.30

Runs until 1st September 2019

The activity is free but if you’re able to make a donation that would be lovely.

2019 / Children's Activities / Community / Education - 08/13/2019
IMG_1794

Education and Community Liaison

I have been carrying out the role of Learning and Liaison officer for Crawley Museum over the last 12 months. This involves working on learning activities as well as liaising with members of Crawley’s communities. As part of my work I have run outreach sessions for schools, and have also drawn up the education session summaries for the sessions at the new museum when it opens. I am now working on activity sheets and am developing plans for a range of learning opportunities in the new museum, including children’s craft activities, preschool sessions, and adult learning opportunities. I am fortunate to have a dedicated group of volunteers who are interested in helping with this, and we recently held a very interesting workshop on family learning. Some of the volunteers have also helped me with running stands at community events. These have included Armed Forces Day, the Crawley Big Seven-0 and the vintage picnics at Worth Park. We took along a selection of old photos of Crawley, and people really enjoyed looking at them and sharing their memories.

I have enjoyed getting to know a number of the local groups in Crawley and talking to them about ideas for temporary exhibitions and activities at the museum. This has included working with the Refugees Welcome Group on their community quilt project on happy memories, which will be displayed in the new museum. Other groups have included the Gurjar Hindu Union, the Polish Saturday School, the Crawley Campaign against Racism and the Crawley Inter-Faith Forum. I have represented the museum at events run by the CHAGOS (Cultural Heritage Across Generations) project which is led by social anthropologists from Edinburgh University, and have met with Raminder Kaur, who is planning to hold an exhibition based on her play Silent Sisters (about the partition of India) at the new museum. I have also worked with Southgate Forum, helping them to organise a community exhibition of photos of Southgate.

I’m very much looking forward to working more with people from all over Crawley in the coming year. If you know of any groups who would be interested in working with us please get in touch!

Andrea Dumbrell, Learning and Liaison Officer 

2018 / Community / Crawley Memories / Crawley Museum / Education - 01/18/2018
Community stand

Volunteering at Community Events

I’m a Londoner. I lived in Horley for 25 years and moved to Crawley 10 years ago, but my roots are still in London therefore it was with apprehension that I turned up for my first event as a volunteer for Crawley museum. ‘Don’t worry’ said Andrea, ‘the people who turn up will tell you about Crawley’, and they certainly did.

The event was celebrating the 70th anniversary of Crawley New Town at Worth Park in May. Andrea had selected a hundred or so photos taken when the new town was being built to display on our stall. The photos were taken of the different ‘villages’ that now make up Crawley, as well as road networks, the airport and various events such as carnivals and parades. Those photos certainly brought back memories and provoked much conversation amongst the people who turned up – old and young alike!

A group of men in their seventies were the first to turn up and they certainly knew the history of Crawley! I imagined them in their wellies and grey school shorts playing all over the building sites after school! People recognised houses being built where friends had lived and the old shops in the various district parades. Andrea was hoping that someone would recognise one of people in the photos but sadly no-one did. The lack of cars on the roads was a talking point. No parking problems at Christmas in town in those days!

It will be interesting to have all these photos available in the new museum and to encourage people to record what they know about the places and scenes before this information is gone.

I certainly know more about the history of Crawley after my afternoon on the stall. My eight year old grandson also now knows a lot of local history after a visit to his school by Andrea and Helen. He is a bit of a history buff anyway, but was so full of interest after their talk he could recount practically word for word of what they had said without drawing breath. If the rest of his class were as fascinated by the talk as he was maybe we will have a band of junior volunteers when the museum eventually opens.

History is made by people and the legacy is carried on by people – never too young to learn! Or even too old?

Ann

12/08/2017

2018 / Community / Crawley Museum / Volunteers - 08/18/2017

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