Creative workshops for local primary school children inspired by RAMM’s World Cultures Gallery
Date of Project: September 2024 to April 2025
Participants & Partners
RAMM partnered with West Country Schools Trust to run a series of free pilot workshops for KS2 children in two of their schools. The aim was to enable pupils to build and develop their creative skills and access arts and culture, specifically learning about cultures in different countries other than our own.
RAMM invited Ashburton and Buckfastleigh primary schools to visit the museum for an activity day and visit to the World Cultures gallery in January 2025. Both are in rural locations where under half of pupils had not had the opportunity to visit a museum before and may have limited access to arts and culture outside of school.
About the World Cultures Schools Project
Ruth Webb, a local designer-maker specialising in costume and prop-making was commissioned to design and lead the workshops, inspired by RAMM’s World Cultures collections.
“I am particularly interested in how connection to ‘folklore’ and working with natural materials can create a sense of shared identity, connection and belonging, as well as to give us new freedoms of expression. The interest stems from spending many hours in museums looking at masks and ‘costumes’ from other cultures and then wondering, where are the disguised costumes from this land?” Ruth Webb
RAMM’s World Cultures collection shows Exeter’s connections to the wider world. The museum cares for approximately 12,000 artefacts and ancestors, with 7% on public display. You can read more info about the collection, including an introductory video by curator Tony Eccles, here
Children aged 7 to 10 from Ashburton and Buckfastleigh Primary Schools visited RAMM in January for an activity day around the theme of cultures and masks from around the World. Pupils had the opportunity to handle a variety of real masks from different countries, sketch in the gallery, discuss the meaning of different patterns, materials and facial expressions and of course meet Ruth and Neil, RAMM’s representatives on the project.
As a follow-up to this visit, Ruth and Neil then visited each school in February to run two full day workshops.
Neil started each workshop with a fun world cultures themed object handling activity called ‘Around the world in 9 objects’ to introduce pupils to different cultures and ways of living through 9 mystery objects. Using their detective skills and a series of clues, the children worked in small groups to respond to a series of questions around each object. When completed, there was a whole class discussion about the objects using images and video of similar objects in their cultural setting. RAMM provided curriculum relevant links to the information and content covered the sessions, with pre and post visit resources.
Ruth followed by introducing her arts practice to the class, showing them images of past work and projects to hopefully inspire the next generation of young artists. Ruth gave a block printing demonstration and asked the children to come up with their own symbolic shapes and stamps to represent something about themselves and decorate their mask. Each pupil used natural pigments and a selection of their hand made stamps to shape and decorate their own unique creations.
Towards the end of March, Ruth will be leading a creative writing session with the children about their mask, followed by a performance-based workshop to rehearse how to move and perform with their masks. This will culminate in a show and tell at the end of the school day to showcase their creations to the community.
Buckfastleigh primary school will showcase the children’s masks to their peers and families in a pop-up display within their school building for the summer term. Ashburton Arts Centre will also display the masks made by Ashburton Primary School from mid-April onwards for the whole community to admire.
Feedback so far…
“Thank you again for the fantastic trip to the museum. I know a lot of the children have already asked parents to go back and visit! They were very much inspired by what they had seen and loved sharing with peers once we arrived back at school.”
Year 4 teacher, Ashburton Primary School
“I loved hearing one child say that she can’t wait until she is older because “I will go to all the museums.” We felt that the link to different cultures was subtly but effectively done, both through the visit and the workshops. Using just the mask to show and tell so many stories was very effective.”
Year 4 teacher, Ashburton Primary School
“Thank you again. The workshop was brilliant from beginning to end!”
Year 5 teacher, Buckfastleigh Primary School
What next?
Following this pilot with West Country Schools Trust, RAMM hopes to continue the project in future years with other Devon based rural schools and academies. The engagement team is currently considering different delivery models based on our project learning, including a school-based workshop day and a mixture of museum and in-school workshops.
If you are interested in discussing the possibility of running this workshop at your school, or would like to know more, please contact Maya (details below).
Further information
Maya Herbolzheimer
Engagement Officer, RAMM
