A decision was made, in connection with Network Rail, to design and create a picture for the bridge at Three Bridges Station.

This would be a Community project involving local schools.

Local schools were contacted to supply artwork for the mural. The themes were trains/railways/journeys.

Five schools responded. These were:
Three Bridges Primary School
Pound Hill Junior School
Milton Mount School
Maidenbower Junior School
Oriel High School

This exhibition brings together some of the art work produced by the schools, pictures of the finished mural and some of the history of Three Bridges.

Diverse Crawley and Crawley Campaign Against Racism return for their annual display at the museum.

Themes of the displays include white privilege,  black hair care and Windrush update.

Included in the display is a banner made by local artist. The coloured ribbons on the banner represent Crawley’s neighbourhoods and the material in between them represent when different communities and cultures first came to the area. The banner was made as a celebration of Crawley New Town’s 75th birthday.

Find out more about Diverse Crawley here 

Find out more about Crawley Campaign Against Racism here 

Crawley Museum welcomes Crawley Arts Society back for their second exhibition with us. This year they are joined by Crawley Camera Club and Crawley Writers Circle to make this exhibition a presentation of art, photography and writing by local people.

Some of the art works are available to buy through Crawley Art Society with a portion of the money being donated to support Crawley Museums in our continued work.

Some examples of previous work by Crawley Writers Circle can be purchased from the museum shop.

You can find out more about Crawley Art Society here
You can find out more about Crawley Camera Club here
You can find out more about Crawley Writers Circle here

Over the years, Queen Elizabeth has visited Crawley many times. This exhibition displays objects and pictures from those visits.

Alongside images and objects of some of the celebrations and memorials that the people of Crawley have had for royal coronations, weddings and funerals.

Please add your royal memories add your memories in the comments and let us know if you have any objects or photographs to contribute.

Crawley Museum put out a call for items and stories that represent births, deaths, marriages and coming of age for you. This exhibition will show some of those items and suggestions alongside work from Murmuration Arts and The Mill Primary Academy.

Murmuration Arts present examples from their outdoor Winter Light trail for families near Crawley last December.

The Mill Primary Academy return with artwork including miniature books and poems.

LPK Learning and Woodard Photography display their photographs of people on their lockdown doorsteps and lockdown photographs.

Objects that represent lockdown from toilet rolls to symbols of working from home and beyond.

The Mill Primary academy present artwork done by pupils on their experience of lockdown.

Crawley Writers Circle display written responses to the pandemic.

Victor Burr (1908-1993) was born in London and moved to Crawley in 1941 where he worked in agriculture at Tysons Nursery to help the war effort. In 1945 he married Elizabeth Tidy and they lived in East Park, Crawley. Encouraged by Elizabeth, Victor was a prolific painter, attending the West Sussex School of Painting and Drawing. He exhibited at the Royal Academy’s Summer exhibition in 1948 and 1951.

Today, Victor Burr is almost unknown. This exhibition displays some of the works owned by Crawley Museum alongside pieces which are on loan from a family friend, Philip Pennicott, whose parents were friends with Victor and Elizabeth when he was growing up. The exhibition would not have been possible without the generous loan of his collection and some of the insights into Victor and Elizabeth that he has given us.

We would also like to thank Crawley Art Society for kindly loaning us their display boards.

This October and November we are proud to be hosting the annual exhibition by Diverse Crawley and Crawley Campaign Against Racism.

In October the Diverse Crawley part of the exhibition will focus on Black History Month:
* From Slavery to Royalty
* Windrush Scandal Update
* Black Lives Matter Update
* Chagossian Islands History

The Crawley Campaign Against Racism part of the exhibition will be on “The Changing Face of Crawley”

Changes happen , especially around a Pandemic .
Some we can deal with, adapting or resisting, some we welcome .

Writing, Art work and Photography explores:

* Diverse memories in Crawley
* Diorama
* Crawley’s Natural World
* Crawley Faiths’ Religious Icons
* Public Art – Hidden in Plain Sight

This August and September we are pleased to be hosting an exhibition of paintings by members of Crawley Art Society.

Most of the paintings are for sale.

Crawley’s Collections Revealed  was a 18 month project funded by Arts Council England. We worked with volunteers and community members to look at and talk about our collections. We want our collection to reflect the diversity of the history of Crawley, and this project and exhibition is about people working together to achieve that.

As part of the project, a group of volunteers worked together to go through the museum’s object collection to make sure that everything was relevant to Crawley. Some items were removed from the collection and dispersed elsewhere. Some objects went to the museums education collection, some to other museums or other organisations and some had to be destroyed for safety reasons.

We also worked with members of the local community to label objects from our collections, and to decide what should be added to our collection.

To start with all of these sessions were taking place in person but then Covid-19 happened and our activities moved online.

The content of this exhibition is largely written by project volunteers and some of the people who took part in the community workshops.

If government restrictions allow, we will be creating a physical version of this exhibition which will be in Crawley Museum from 3rd June to 31st July 2021.

Thank you to everyone who was part of this project!