Welcome to Museum Learning!
This is Elizabeth - founder and lead practitioner of museumlearning.org.
I am now an original content writer, creating learning resources for museums. I also work with a talented and creative team of illustrators and digital creators to help you make the most of the formal and informal learning opportunities in your collection or site.
I have been designing and delivering learning programmes for museums and historic sites for three decades, creating content which won the Sandford Award for Heritage Education in partnership with Rachel Hathaway Illustration in 2019. My career began as a prehistory tutor at reconstructed ‘Celtic’/ UK Iron Age villages.
I have always worked closely with schools, colleges and life long learning groups while I worked as a Tutor, a Project Manager, a Learning Officer, an Interpretation Officer, an Outreach Worker and for the past 13 years as a freelance consultant and creative producer.
My past clients include four county councils, Historic England, The National Trust, regional museums, the Wildlife Trusts, archives, castles, country estates, small collections and social projects, as well as direct delivery for schools.
Find out more below about the breadth of my experience, and about packages I offer for the management of museum learning. Visit the store for instant downloads on popular school visit topics, for background reading or use in workshops.
Services for museums & example fees
Learning Programme launch or refresh with elizabeth
My core work is creating fresh, effective and innovative learning experiences for cultural spaces.
I have a particular track record of creating resources and activities which emphasise the development of history skills for pupils, such as enquiry, oracy and comparing and contrasting different periods. I am an Associate Member of the Historical Association, very familiar with the Arts Council Learning for All Framework and regularly meet with teachers and school clusters in my work, keeping an eye on school history expectations.
I can help you to develop a ‘golden thread’ - a learning theme which is rooted in your collection and ties together historic eras. These might be topics in the primary curriculum and reflective of your locality.
Past clients for this work include local council museums (mining heritage, Romans, prehistory, Anglo Saxons, 1920s), a military museum, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust (archaeology/ prehistory theme), a Police Museum (history of law and order), City Archives (the history of trade on the River Severn), The National Trust (Victorian estate workers), a woodland charity (KS1 Biology), Historic England (Iron Age lifestyles), and two open air museums (Iron Age Lifestyles).
Recommended 5 - 10 days consultancy to include visits.
Please get in touch to discuss your requirements.
BESPOKE EVENT CREATION
I plan and deliver a broad programme of events, from intense learning for a few families to a themed outdoor gatherings for 1000.
Recent examples include a public drop-in event for a collaboration of six environmental organisations, and a family drop-in on medieval dyeing. Past events have also included two storytelling festivals, a 6 week history course for families and video content for a remote consultation day.
If you need event design and a clear delivery plan to share with operations staff, I offer an affordable hourly rate with mutually agreed outcomes.
£30 per hour, billed monthly with scheduled updates.
Remote or in-person teachers liaison for your museum - keeping them up to date and engaged with your offer
Successful schools visits are such good news for museums. Not only do they engage the pupils, but of course the proud parents too, and keep your site relevant and in the consciousness of the local community.
In 2025, schools are under so much financial pressure, that a fun trip out in a coach to their local museum is less on the agenda than it used to be, and now has to tick so many curriculum and enrichment boxes.
Liaison with schools is time consuming, and is usually the remit of a member of staff with so many other things to complete on their desk.
I offer a service whereby I step in to speak directly to schools with you. I really get to know your team, and how your programme works, then take over the nitty gritty of sharing risk assessments, clarifying numbers, and take on any queries about adaptations, ensuring everything feels comfortable for you.
My career before museums was in communications and marketing, and I am passionate about good customer service. Please get in touch if a few hours a week dedicated to schools liaison would be of value to you - at an affordable price.
£25 per hour, billed monthly.
Immersive and engaging
workshops & events
Case Studies
As well as writing original content for museum learning programmes, I also work on public art and engagement through witing activity trails, or working with community groups.
“Coal Scientists enabled children to discover how coal is formed, its properties and its different uses as a fuel. A high quality work sheet, mirroring the steps of the scientific process, was used to guide the session and each step involved intense discussion, as well as opportunities to handle coal samples, delivering an in-depth understanding.”
Case study: Rhondda Cynon Taff Council - Published learning materials, including award-LANDSCAPE ACTIVITY TRAIL and ‘table top science’ worksheet: ‘Coal Scientists’.
CASE STUDY- SCHOOLS: cross curricular PSHE workshops for English Heritage site -Blackfriars Priory. Original artefacts shown in this section are in the collection of the Museum of Gloucester.
“A project inking medieval monasticism with PSHE, consulting the archives of the Dominicans and Gloucester city while meeting the needs of the National Curriculum. A challenge and a pleasure of a project, aimed at faith schools and well beyond...””
Case study ‘creative response’ history workshops for Museum of Gloucester PUBLIC PROGRAMME.
““We have really learnt a lot today about the value of the plants in the city! Its really interesting how people made medicine. It’s made me think about the wildflowers by the docks I love. I have put them in my picture.” ”
projects & collaborations
I have coordinated a range of public engagement projects, providing history narratives and working in collaboration with artists and multi media specialists. Some highlights are described here and my blog will explore my 2025 projects.
I am lucky enough to work with illustrator/ designer, Rachel Hathaway whose vivid imagination and beautiful illustration style has bought so many historic characters to life. Our work has included learning materials for Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum, Tetbury Police Museum, Blackfriars Priory, Rhondda Heritage Park and the National Lido of Wales, Lido Ponty.
Rachel’s work can also be found at www.rachelhathaway.co.uk
In 2022 I worked in conjunction with Squeaky Pedal mulitmedia to produce short films for use in the Museum of Gloucester learning programme. I wrote the story board and scripts while Squeaky Pedal recorded and edited footage. It was so fun and an absolute pleasure to work with a team who really made the best of the young actor’s skills, lingering on their emotional words about both Viking attack on the Saxon ‘burh’, and slavery in Roman Britain.
Worcestershire County Council commissioned me to create a legacy artwork which would celebrate the shared sense of place of one of its city neighbourhoods. I worked with the endlessly creative Vik Westaway, community artist to make a legacy art piece of the stories shared by women in the Punjabi community of East Worcester. The commemorative tapestry of their responses to the archives about their street hangs in the learning space of The Hive in Worcester and includes all of the colours of the red brick and henna, a shared heritage of rusty red on a tapestry of images from the past and present. The vision for this formed in a collaborative way between myself as producer and Vik as community artist and was repeated with an audience of women of Jamaican heritage.
Vik currently works in willow and has contributed to Chelsea Flower Show award winning gardens as well as vibrant community artworks in mid-Devon. www.vikwestaway.co.uk
I carried out an oral history project in 2018, forming up a longer term programme of community format for a commemorative book. I named the project ‘A Century of Memories’, reflecting on the memories and the memories of memories of the First World War. I was commissioned by Bath & North East Somerset Council to draw the project together and chose the wonderfully human illustrations of Karen Donnelly to illustrate the insightful stories.
In 2019 I worked with Karen again, researching the history of the family who once lived and worked at Crofton Beam engines and writing layered interpretation for an audience of young families.
My digital partner is Nigel Jones of AppStudioUX : an outstanding photographer and digital content creator:
https://appstudioux.com/ Together, Nigel and I have written interpretation plans for two medieval churches.
I am interested in the Iron Age/ Bardic tradition of storytelling to enhance sense of place, and have worked on site at 100 Acer Wood Conservation Trust in Wotton Under Edge to deliver outdoor prehistory sessions and object based storytelling for a summer programme. Storytelling is always a significant element of my planned formal and informal learning sessions.
