Projects

Living Museum

We are delighted to be launching a new project, the Living Museum, which enables students to explore, introduce and display objects from their own lives at the Rumble Museum.

The initiative involves children, staff and members of the wider community choosing an object from their homes and lives, and writing about why this object has become important to them, and what the object is. The objects they choose are then displayed in the Living Museum cabinet in the Rumble Museum for a period of time. Their stories will appear in display boards and also online on the Rumble Museum site.
 
The aim is to encourage children to engage with the objects in their own lives, exploring them from the perspective of the items as both personal and historical artefacts. 
 
Every term, the objects in the cabinet will change, as previous display objects will be returned to their owners, while new objects will appear, chosen, researched and written about by different students, staff and members of the wider community.
 
If you would like to submit an object for the Living Museum, please get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
 

Artefact Story Trails

One of the most exciting new projects we are developing together with the classics centre this year involves the design and creation of a number of murals which will explore possible biographies for some of the many Roman artefacts we have on display at the centre. 

Most of the items we have are pieces of much larger objects, and the idea behind these mural trails is to show the story of how some of these items would have been made and used, and eventually broken, and discovered centuries later as fragments. Each trail will consist of three murals which trace these stories; the artefact itself will then appear in small cabinet at the end of the mural trail. The trails will eventually appear all across the school campus, as well as in feeder schools. 

Westgate Project

During 2015, a group of Year Nine students had the opportunity to be involved in an exciting archaeological project run by Oxford Archaeology.The project involved two in-school workshops followed by a tour of the Westgate Centre site and excavation finds.

In the first session, Ben Ford (Project Manager of Westgate excavations at OA) used historic maps to show how the area has changed over time. Pupils used the maps to identify different land use, known buildings, road layouts, and rivers and they saw how the area around the Greyfriars and St Ebbes has changed. This showed how archaeologists learn about what is in an area before they start excavating.

In the second session, Jane Harrison (Oxford Castle Unlocked - Outreach and Education) looked at the historical background of the Greyfriars and the area. This gives archaeologists the background information about the type of site and remains that they could encounter.