We’re passionate about education here at Tameside Cultural Services so back in 2021 when we were successful in securing a Culture Recovery Fund grant we knew our priority was to invest in our schools offer. After months of school and museum closures due to the pandemic we wanted to make sure we were ready for when schools were able to visit us once more.

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Portland Basin Museum has long been a popular place for schools to visit, both from within Tameside and from further afield. We wanted to make sure we were still delivering what teachers need and want from us. We asked teachers for their help and reviewed all the feedback we received.

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Working with 2 Boards and a Passion theatre company and Interference Art, we created a brand new history workshop (Tameside Time Travellers) completely revamped one of our most popular history workshops (Toys) and made changes to how we deliver all of our workshops.  We also worked with dance professional Olivia Peers from Born and Bred and artist Jack Doyle to revamp our art workshops. We now have curriculum focussed workshops that will help children to develop a range of artistic skills through exploring different materials.

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The Culture Recovery Fund also allowed to do something we have wanted to do for a long time – we created this beautiful and engaging new website to bring together all the creative and cultural things happening In Tameside This has allowed us to showcase all our school workshops, object loan boxes and supporting resources for schools, as well as being a place to share events, activities and community contacts.  

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Our new school offer has been in place for a few months now and we are thrilled to say the feedback has been amazing. We were grateful to Millbrook Primary who tested out our revamped Toys workshop before it launched. We knew we were on the right path when we received these comments from the teacher: “The children were fully engaged by the facilitator. She kept things pacey, hands on and fun for the children. Having taken part in previous toys workshops at Portland Basin we knew of the high standard to expect but this new and improved workshop surpassed our expectations. We loved the hands on toys timeline and this helped to support the teaching of chronology when we went back to the classroom.”

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Thank you to all the schools who took time out to feed back their comments to us – it really has helped us so much.  

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You can explore the full range of our school offer at Portland Basin Museum, Astley Cheetham Art Gallery, Local Studies and Archives Centre and outdoor spaces here.

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