Jenny, seen on the left, with the Museum Director and Collections Manager, ready for a school visit.
March was a fantastic month for the museum, winning Object of the Year in the Cornwall Heritage Awards for our large piece of the Berlin Wall (you can read all about it here), and being Highly Commended in the same awards for our Heritage Heroes, who organised and hosted our fantastic Fun Palaces event last year. But that’s not all; we’re really pleased to say we have also been shortlisted for a national award.
The museum, well, more particularly our fantastic education volunteer Jenny Simmons, has been well-deservedly shortlisted as Volunteer of the Year at the national Museums + Heritage Awards.
Our museum is operated by a small team of staff, heavily supported by volunteers, without whom we could not offer the range of facilities we do. Jenny is currently the only learning volunteer we have at the museum (though we have a couple of willing folk who get involved when needed), and she works tirelessly to develop and deliver our learning offer.
Researching topics, and producing resources and activities for education sessions, as well as giving her time to deliver them, Jenny does all this in one day a week in the museum, and many hours outside of this time.
With the work Jenny has put in we are able to provide an increased education offer, and have increased the amount of school visits the museum receives over the year, seeing return visits in 2018. Her rapport with pupils and teachers alike brings the museum to life when school groups are in, and the children never fail to go away inspired and having learnt something new.
Jenny has even visited schools to award prizes for work produced as a result of a class’ visit. The success of these education sessions would not have been possible were it not for the tireless work of this one amazing volunteer.
If you would like to book an education session at the museum, you can find out more information about what we offer on our educational visits page.