Bread, Beards and the Bronze Age

Gradually getting caught up with things.

23rd February and another new experience, making and baking flatbreads on on open fire. The event was Bread, Beaker, Beards and Britons at Segedunum. Part of the of the BBC Hands on History events, the Beakers were being made by potter Graham Taylor and I was making a simple dough without yeast that could be baked on a flat stone next to the fire. I took along a small saddle quern and examples of the kind of grain people would have grown and ground to make bread.

It more or less worked. We made about 60 'cakes', but had difficulty cooking them all. The dough was easy enough, but I really needed a bigger fire with more ash to keep the stone warm enough. Perhaps less of the hard wood logs and more of the twigs and brushwood gathered from the woodland. Still it was great fun and I'll definitely try this one again.

Campaign! Make an Impact - What's Next?

The funding for Campaign! Make an Impact is just about over and in the current climate it will be difficult to gain more, so I thought it time to mention some of the Outcomes and Impacts from the last year.

The Story
We started with 3 groups along Hadrian's Wall, 2 primary schools, from Newcastle and Carlisle and a group of home educated childrenfrom across the North East. They did such good work that Jan Mears, Study Support Officer from North Tyneside Council felt the project should get bigger. We attracted a further 9 schools from Tyneside. This work enable another 2 schools from Cumbria to join in. Discovery Museum began to run workshops based on the English Civil War and their 'Seige and Storm' exhibition.


The Outcomes

• Regional Network to continue to the work.
• 14 schools involved with 4 more working with Discovery. Discovery are intending to carry on offering Campaign-in-a-Day workshops.
• 9 museums or other heritage sites involved, Tullie House, Arbeia, South Shields Museum and Art Gallery, Segedunum Roman Fort, Blyth Battery, Stephenson Railway Museum, Newcastle University Special Collections, Woodhorn, and Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums Outreach Team.
• Regional Conference, 16th February at Discovery Museum attended by 45 educators and professionals from across the region. Around 100 children involve in the project came in the afternoon and listened to presentation from 6 school groups.
• 2 schools will travel to the British Museum as a reward for their hard work.
• Resources on the North Tyneside Learning Platform and planned resources for Hadrian's Wall and on REALM (Resources for Exploring Archive, Libraries and Museums in the North East).

The Impacts

We are only Year 3, but We can Make a Difference - Primary School
presentation.

I'll add some more quotes soon

Discovery Visits 2011

The Discovery Visits at Housesteadsand Chesters have begun again. The first one was on Valentine's Day - 14th February, when 55 children from Tyneside donned their tunics and joined the 'First Tungrians' for the day. It only snowed at little! More are booked after Easter, when hopefully the weather will warm up a little.

for more info or to book a workshop - http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/education/discovery-visits/housesteads-roman-fort/
or
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/education/discovery-visits/chesters-roman-fort/