GEM and Leeds Museums and Galleries present…

Devising, developing and managing Covid-19 secure loans boxes for schools

Are you considering setting up a loans box service as outreach to schools from September?

Worried about making everything safe for schools and your organisation? Looking to making some income?

Leeds Museums and Galleries manage a successful, income generating primary schools membership scheme that includes loans boxes containing only accessioned museum objects (no replicas, no models), workshops and CPD. In this session, we will explore how Leeds Museums and Galleries developed their relationships with schools, their loans box service and back-up resources on mylearning.org, what teachers want and how they have made the loans boxes Covid-19 secure.

Participants will:

• Gain an understanding of how to develop and manage a loans box service, from internal advocacy and admin to external marketing.

• Gain understanding of how to do this in robust a Covid-19 secure manner.

Loans boxes are suggested by DCMS and NMDC as a potential avenue for organisations to explore for schools engagement in the Good Practice Guidance for Reopening Museums.

Facilitators: Emily Nelson and Kate Fellows

Emily is the Learning and Access Officer (Membership) at the Leeds Discovery Centre. As well as delivering sessions, she works closely with schools through the Leeds Museums Primary membership scheme to enable them to access accessioned objects in the classroom on a half-termly basis, delivering CPD, as well as working closely with curators and conservators in order to choose the objects and put the boxes together in the first place. Emily has worked on various Leeds Museums sites across the last 3 years, and was at Scarborough Museums Trust prior to this.

Kate wants to change the whole world for the better… but she’ll start with Leeds for now! She has worked with object based learning in museums for over 16 years for a range of organisations from the National Trust, to Harewood House and IWM North, and is currently the Head of Learning and Access for Leeds Museums and Galleries. She was the 2010-11 Learning Fellow on the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme. Along the way, she has met and worked with many wonderful, amazing people, has learnt so much and is still learning.