Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery: ‘Myths and Legends in Roman Life’ workshops (February – May 2025)
‘Delve into the intriguing world of Roman heroes, villains, mythical monsters and magical gods. Explore the Roman gallery, handle Roman artefacts and create your own clay tile inspired by Roman myths and legends’
This was a 2-hour workshop for 15 children at a time. The workshops were led by two educators and supported by two volunteers – one who is currently doing a degree in Classical Civilisations and the other who has been teaching Latin classes to adults within the museum for the past 40 years. The volunteers were able to transfer their enthusiasm and knowledge to both the children who attended on the day and to the educators who regularly deliver ‘Meet the Romans’ workshops with school groups – this meant the workshops have had a wider impact on the understanding and knowledge of the wider team.
The children who attended were fascinated by the stories behind some of the Roman artefacts and particularly enjoyed the more gory stories! Despite our collection being rather small in terms of opportunities to link it to myths and legends we managed to enthuse the group with the tall tales that were linked to the objects in the cases. They were particularly inspired by the remains of Medusa’s hair on one of our tombstones and enjoyed the opportunity to explore some of these myths and legends to make a clay tile.
We regularly deliver art workshops during the school holidays and have been looking for the opportunity to combine art and history in a way that is fun and relevant to young children. These workshops were very popular and quickly booked up within a couple of weeks of the artwork appearing on the website and social media.
It was great to be able to offer the workshops free of charge as it meant we had a wider cross section of children taking part than we would normally have.
All of the children responded positively to feedback about the workshops, telling us it was ‘fun’, ‘interesting’ and ‘I liked learning new things’.
