With over 800 excellent museums from all over Britain nominated for The Family Friendly Museum Award, Woodhorn Museum is thrilled to have been selected as one of the top 20 of those that go the extra mile to welcome families.
“Families are very important to us at Woodhorn,” explains Keith Merrin, Director of Woodhorn, “and reaching this longlist of attractions recognises the concerted efforts everyone has been making over the last twelve months to make a visit even more enjoyable and rewarding.
“Staff have developed new activity trollies to encourage families to play and learn in an informal and fun way, implemented a programme of free craft activities and short colliery tours, improved the catering offer for children and provided new baby changing facilities. We’ve also worked with an artist to design fun, pocket sized Family Trails which have won an international award for their design. Most recently, an exciting young people’s project at Woodhorn called The Mindfuls, has developed the Thought Kit – an interactive toolkit to help young people who visit the museum explore and interact with the art at Woodhorn.
“It is great for Woodhorn to be recognised for its work to make families welcome, but it’s even better to see the results of the work and the children, parents and grandparents having a fantastic visit and enjoying every aspect of the museum experience.”
Over coming weeks, the longlist of museums will be put before a panel of experts, including Kids in Museums' Patron and celebrity children’s author Damian Dibben and historian and broadcaster Helen Castor. They will choose a shortlist of six and these six museums, all excellent at welcoming families, will be road-tested anonymously by families. The families will pick the winner.
If you would like to be one of the mystery family museum judges and help choose who wins Britain’s biggest museum award, email [email protected] with a bit of information about your family and why you want to be judges.
The Family Friendly Museum Award is sponsored by Telegraph Newspaper Group