During August, Museum of London Docklands had put on a range of free events for the whole family. These included workshops like jewellery making and creating artwork as well as story-telling days and interactive workshops about the history of London’s tunnels.
The Tunnel: Archaeology of Crossrail exhibition displayed objects that were recovered from the construction dig including as human remains that were found in Liverpool Street, Victorian chamber pots that were found near Stepney Green, and Crosse and Blackwell jars that were found near Tottenham Court road. Alongside the Tunnel exhibition, an interactive workshop called Time Tunnellers. We were invited to attend the blogger’s launch of the over 5’s workshop but missed it due to bad weather and traffic. We still made it to the museum, just not to the event so we explored the museum instead. We had a look at the permanent collections at the museum. LO was really fascinated with the cutlass display and the whale tooth carving in the city and river gallery.
Time Tunnellers workshop
On LO’s birthday, we returned back to the Docklands museum and booked in for the free Time Tunnellers workshop. LO started off being really scared of taking part in the event so we had to take it all a bit slowly. As he warmed up to the workshop and saw the other children taking part, he started to become a little more at ease with the activity and got stuck in. I think he ended up really liking the workshop. Below is a slideshow of photos from the workshop. I found it really fascinating and the staff were really interactive and got the children and adults all participating at one point.
Some of the artefacts on display at the workshop were real findings from the actual Crossrail excavation such as the glazed ceramic pieces. After the workshop, we spent a little more time exploring the museum again. We checked out the Children Mudlarks gallery which is a free play area at the museum (needs to be pre-booked online or at the museum) but didn’t stay long enough as it was time for me to go to work… the joys of part-time work and parenting! There’s always lots going on at this museum and I think people tend to forget about it compared to the bigger museums like the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and Museum of London in Barbican. If you’re nearby the docklands, head over to this museum for a bit of history – the kids will definitely love it and I’m sure grown-ups will too!
