Museum Events and Activities

For further information on events held at Museum, please telephone 01628 796846 or e-mail (museum.collections@rbwm.gov.uk)

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PAST EVENTS

• Open Day - Saturday 6th March 2010
• The Big Draw - Make your own Coat of Arms - October 2009
• Open Day at the Museum Store - November 2008
• The Big Draw - October 2008
• Museum Store Open Day - November 2007
• The Big Draw - October 2007
• 'Vile Victorians' exhibition - September 2007
• 'Victorian Fair' on Bachelors Acre, September 2007

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Past Events

Open Day

Open day this year is a Museum Planning Day - Saturday 6 March 10am - 3pm. In the Maidenhead Room, Windsor Guildhall, High Street, Windsor, SL4 1LR

We really need your opinions on the designer's plans and to know what you would like to see in the new museum!

Please come along to chat informally with staff and volunteers and give us your views. Discover more about some of the objects in the collection. Meet the Friends of the Museum and find out about volunteering, either behind-the-scenes or as a steward in the museum.

Bring along your children too, to have fun dressing up and to tell us what they would like to see and to do in the museum!

A new Museum in Windsor!

Do please come along on Saturday 6 March between 10am - 3pm to let us know what you would like to see in the new Museum!

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The Big Draw - Make your own Coat of Arms

More than 30 children and adults enjoyed making their own Coat of Arms on Saturday 10th October at Windsor Library. They were inspired by their name, hobbies, pets and som museum objects on loan for the day, including the deer on the Windsor Coat of Arms.

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'Museum Store Open Day', 2008

November's theme of 'Food: Feasts and Famine' was very successful and attracted 77 visitors who dropped in to see behind the scenes at the Museum Store. They looked at displays related to food and drink from the museum collection and enjoyed hearing short talks throughout the day by local historians on Bread Riots and Famine, Kitchenalia, Banquets and Wartime Rationing. Children enjoyed dressing up to go out for a 'posh dinner' and making marzipan sweets and pomanders from oranges.

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The Big Draw, 2008

This year our theme was 'Fire' and the venue was appropriately the new Firestation Centre for Culture & Arts in St. Leonards Road, Windsor. Children were able to draw a self-portrait as a Fire Officer and visitors of all ages looked at the display of museum objects and drew some of them.

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The Museum Store Open Day, 2007

The annual Open Day attracted nearly 100 visitors to see displays of archaeology in the museum collection including flint tools, spearheads and other objects found locally from the Stone Age to Saxon times. The tooth of a woolly mammoth from earliest times excited much attention, as did a beautifully made Saxon bone comb. There were also archaeology finds from the collection which could be handled, and this was particularly enjoyed by the children.

Free short talks on the museum archaeology collection by local historians: '5,000 years of Treasure', 'The Stunning Stone Age' and 'Wraysbury Revealed' were full to capacity.

There was a display of artefacts arranged in layers of soil in a glass tank, with the oldest eras at the bottom and modern throwaways scattered on top. This showed just how layers of archaeology build up over the centuries. Children had the chance to dress up as Celts, Romans and Saxons, to colour pictures, or to try making a 'stone age' clay thumb pot, which they could take home.

We were pleased to welcome the Mayor, Councillor Leo Walters, and his wife, to the display, who expressed great interest in all that they saw.

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'The Big Draw', 2007

18 children with their parents went to Windsor Library for our event, which was linked to the display of life in the 1950s then on view. They sketched some of the 1950s toys and plates on show, and enthusiastically drew new designs of their own on paper plates.

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'Vile Victorians' exhibition, 2007

This exhibition, staged at the Guildhall as part of the Windsor Festival, was a huge success, attracting nearly 3,000 visitors including some from around the world. Based on the 'Horrible Histories' series of children's books and borrowed from Wycombe Museum with adaptations for Windsor, it presented some of the darker aspects of Victorian life.

But it was by no means gloomy - children loved crawling into the 'chimney' to see what it would have been like to be a chimney sweep, or pulling the long chain of a Victorian loo to 'flush' it and hear a stinky fact about Victorian sewage. There were many very positive comments in the visitors book: "it really brought the Victorian times to life" wrote several enthusiastic visitors.

Special thanks go to the stewards from the Friends of Windsor & Royal Borough Museum and the Windsor & Eton Society.

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'Victorian Fair' on Bachelors Acre, 2007

The museum stall at the Fair, where all the stallholders dressed in Victorian costume, attracted over 200 visitors. It provided us with a good advertisement for the museum, since many who came were unaware that the borough has a local history collection.

Our Victorian pedlar dolls proved a particular attraction: miniature versions of the modern-day purveyors of trinkets, sweetmeats and other fairings around the Acre.

Children had fun dressing up and everyone enjoyed handling real Victorian objects and learning more about the museum.

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