Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens allows children to dive in the Then and Now exhibition
The Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens is currently hosting a themed event. The Museum is offering families and especially children the opportunity to experience the current Then and Now exhibition in a fun and interesting way.
The ongoing event consists of backpacks which can be borrowed and are full of fun activities and items which make the time children spend in the museum more fun and engaging. In order for a backpack to be borrowed from the museum a small deposit must be made – keys, a £5 note or something similar.
The backpacks contain a variety of interesting items which allow children to explore the depths of their creativity. Some of those items are Eddy – a teddy bear companion explorer to help children in their adventure, colour mixers and identifiers; so children can find more about colours and find which colours are used in the paintings and pictures, and a magnifying glass to help them spot details.
The backpack also offers a frame, a piece of paper and a full set of coloured pencils in order to give kids the chance to become artists themselves by replicating whichever painting they choose.
The participants are free to take their own paintings back with them as they leave the Museum. Hidden in the backpack is also a guide where the details of several challenges can be found.
Regarding the backpacks, Jennie Lambert, a learning officer at the museum, said: “What it does is it really helps children to focus on the art.”
The Then and Now exhibition contains paintings, drawings and watercolours of Sunderland since 1700, the most recent of which dates back to 1950. All images featured in the exhibition are from the museum’s own art collection.
Jennie said: “There’s over a 100 images and it shows Sunderland in different places, different areas, such as the river, the city centre, the east end. And those have been contrasted with photographs of how those places appear today.”
The exhibition also features recent photographs of the depicted on the paintings areas in order to provide the viewer with the opportunity to compare the environment. The new photographs were taken by photography students at the University of Sunderland.
The Museum has several additional events which are either currently ongoing or starting in the near future and allow for anybody interested to engage and participate in them. The next event, which is currently under development, will feature dinosaur eggs. The discovery of those eggs will secure a dinosaur themed prize.
Another current event is Wallace the Lion who travelled the country with Mander’s Menagerie until 1875. Children are allowed to join a membership club – Wallace’s Warriors and participate in a different set of activities.