Projects

Over many years, the Rumble Museum has accumulated a collection of fantasy and speculative fiction early editions. These have been displayed in cabinets around the site, but the recent refurbishment of the Library led to the need to take down all the cabinets and an original Rumble Museum vinyl. Rather than simply replace everything, we decided to create a striking forest mural featuring characters and objects from our fiction collection. 

The initial mural idea, conceived by Rumble Director, Dr Lorna Robinson, was a black and white forest, like an illustration in an old-fashioned fairy tale book, filled with objects and characters which would be in colour. The idea has now been turned into a highly detailed, vivid and striking design by Milton Keynes-based artist and designer Luke McDonnell. Luke worked intensively over the school's half term week to create a stunning work of art. He created a mysterious wrap-around effect, to reflect the idea of the forest creeping round corners, and used pen and ink to render an intricate, book illustration effect on a huge scale.

Over the past few months, we have been organising a unique and exciting project to convert two units of old school lockers into museum display cabinets for our forthcoming 100 Years of Toys & Games Exhibition.

The project began in December when we ran a community collection event for toys and games. A wide range of vintage toys and games were donated, and we also recorded the stories and experiences of people playing with different toys and games during their childhood. Between January and March, we were delighted that Beth Jones from the Museum of Oxford ran workshops with our Year Eight, Nine and Ten Museum Council students on recording oral history, and making labels for displays. The students chose three toys from our collection to be displayed in the Museum of Oxford's new exhibition celebrating their 50th year.

The students then each chose a toy, game or book to design a "story locker" upon. They were given empty photocopying paper boxes to create detailed mockups of their ideas. A wonderful range of creative ideas developed inside those cardboard boxes, from a Pollypocket world inside a locker, to a vintage shop counter for the cash register, from a marble run surrounded by mirrors, to a desk for a typewriter, with a mini noticeboard for writers' notes.

Museum Students in Year Eleven and Twelve at Cheney School in east Oxford were very excited to be taking part in a collaborative project involving the forthcoming exhibition "This is what you get" at the Ashmolean.

It is the first exhibition in a public gallery to bring together the visual work of Stanley Donwood and Radiohead's Thom Yorke. The Ashmolean state: More than 120 works will be on display, with many of the paintings, drawings and digital art specifically created for Thom Yorke’s internationally acclaimed band Radiohead, formed in Oxford in 1985.

The young people were invited to attend a session where the director of the exhibition presented ideas for the exhibition, and students were able to offer feedback and suggestions to be incorporated into the exhibition. Students were asked, before the visit, to choose a Radiohead album cover or song and prepare a creative response: this could be a poem, piece of artwork, or song. The Ashmolean was particularly keen on these responses being collaborative projects, since the exhibition itself is focused on a collaboration.

Students produced new songs, artwork, poems, voiceovers, and videos - all inspired by the cover art and music of Radiohead. The Ashmolean have created a special exhibition page for the students' work here

We are very grateful to have been able to collaborate with the Ashmolean on this first of its kind exhibition. Rumble Museum students had chosen Radiohead's OK Computer to feature in a permanent new Music Technology Exhibition at the school. 

The Rumble Museum at Cheney School is excited to be working with the History of Science Museum on an exciting project to create some new technology displays in our new cabinets on the first floor of their Lane Building.

The school museum already houses a collection of technology items in our Technology through Time Collection. In order to develop our collections, we are calling for members of the wider community to loan or donate items to our collections. We already have a 1950s Bakelite Television, 1930s gramophone, a 1950s radio, a electric typewriter and a 1990s mobile phone and many other items in our collection, which are all on display at Cheney School. 

We are interested in any sort of technical item from any era, right up to present day, so if you have anything you'd be happy to loan or donate, please get in touch on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We are also looking for stories, memories and experiences of using these technologies to create an oral history of the collection. We are running a Collection and Exhibition Afternoon on 19th March. If you would like to share any memories or stories, please get in touch.

The Museum of Climate Hope project is an exciting new project led by Bill Finnegan from the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment. The project will create a digital trail across the six different University of Oxford locations in the city.  There will be one object in each place. Cheney’s  Rumble Museum has been invited to be the seventh location for the trail!

In order to choose our own objects for the trail, our Museum Councils drew up a shortlist of five possible objects to include in the trail. Every student at Cheney then had the opportunity to vote on which object best represents the theme of Climate Hope!

We also gave the wider community the chance to cast their vote on the five shortlisted objects from our collections. The objects chosen can be viewed below with text from our Museum Council students on why they have chosen the items.

In autumn 2022, students in 8* and 8Up classes at Cheney began an exciting Rumble Museum project delivered in partnership with the University of Oxford, Dr Philippa Matthews, Dr Sally Frampton and local science-based artist Dr Lizzie Burns.

It explored the use of vaccines in the past and present, as well as ideas about the future of vaccines too. It was part of a wider project, Infecting Minds, which was also delivered in two schools in South Africa, and ideas and artwork were shared between all schools involved. The project ran every Monday throughout October, November and December, and included a trip to explore plants and medicine at the Botanical Gardens. Students created artwork, posters and craft items in response to the wide variety of ideas and information about the past, present and future of vaccines.

In our first session, the groups drew self-portraits. They were then invited to express their thoughts about vaccines. After this, the group looked at a range of artefacts from the Covid pandemic, which have become very familiar in our daily lives, and to imagine what archaeologists from the future might make of these items. They included facemasks, lateral flow tests, and posters encouraging people to get vaccinated. Finally, everyone decorated a facemask with their own designs in response to the ideas and thoughts from the session.