BBC Domesday Revisited

We are looking for Models for a 1980’s style Fashion Show to be held at Coventry Transport Museum on Saturday 27th August as part of the BBC’s Domesday Revisited weekend at Coventry Transport Museum.

We need 10 models to be our fashion stars’ to wear 1980’s fashions for a Catwalk fashion show during the afternoon of Saturday 27th August.
The fashion styles will be judged and there are prizes to be won!

Entrants must be over 18 years and supply their own 1980’s style clothes for the fashion show.

To find out more and to register yourself as a model for the show, you can either telephone Naomi Wilcox on Tel: 02476 234287 or
Email: education@transport-museum.co.uk

Facilitators Blog…Forties Fun!

Last week we reached the 1940s in our Through the Decades weekends, so we dusted off our ration books and put our hair in curls! It was a great weekend and lots of you came to learn about life in Britain during the war. We were very grateful to our resident gardener and museum assistant Jeff who explained all about Digging for Victory and planted lots of French bean seeds with you all! We were amazed to see how much his shoots had grown overnight, so hopefully lots of you who visited us have your own mini plants beginning to grow at home! On Saturday we were visited by Monty’s Double! Colin-Brooks Williams is a professional Montgomery look-a-like who spent the day at the museum near the Victory Car – Monty’s own staff Humber vehicle. He had a great day chatting to visitors about Monty’s life and posing for lots of photos! Many thanks to Colin for coming along.



It’s always a highlight when we do wartime activities to hear the memories of those who lived during the time, and this weekend was no different. Several of our visitors told us about their experiences as evacuees and reminisced about rationing. Our younger visitors were surprised to see how little food a weekly ration was, and how heavy a small piece of shrapnel could be!
This weekend we’re still in the Forties, this time celebrating the anniversary of VE Day! There’ll be bunting galore, so don’t put it all away just yet! Children can have a go at our free activity and make their own Union Flag to wave as well as learning about how Britain celebrated the end of the war.

Don’t forget next month we have our 1950s weekend, coinciding nicely with the opening of our new exhibition ‘Coming of Age at the Ace Café’. At the Fifties weekend you can expect lots of rocking and rolling! Come along and have a go at our Elvis Karaoke (complete with Elvis wig and glasses!), and see how life changed for people after the war. We hope to see lots of you there!

Facilitator's Blog - Coming Soon 1940's Weekend

Our next ‘Through the Decades’ weekend is coming up soon, its our 1940’s weekend on 30th April – 1st May and we’ve got loads of things planned, including the very popular ‘Granddad’s Allotment’ activity where you can learn how to ‘dig for Victory’ and plant a vegetable seed to take home and look after and then eat!

We are also really pleased to welcome our Field Marshall Montgomery Look - Alike who will be standing to attention by Monty’s Humber Staff car and reading from the real Monty’s diaries.
Lots of us who work at the Museum will be in 1940’s costume so why don’t you dress up too? You could visit us dressed as an evacuee a soldier or a land girl!

Facilitator's Blog - 1930's Weekend

Our 1930’s weekend followed soon after ( 2^nd and 3^rd April ) with visitors discovering some of the interesting items invented during this decade… most importantly of course the chocolate! Did you know that Rolo’s, KitKat’s, Smarties, Mars Bars and Malteasers were all invented during the 1930’s!

Really importantly to us at the Transport Museum this was also the decade when the Highway code was first published and the dreaded driving test was introduced.

Facilitator's Blog - 1920's Weekend

Just time for quick catch up with our ‘facilitator’ year here at Coventry Transport Museum. I really hope you made it to our very glamorous 1920’s weekend ( 19^th – 20^th March) where we got the chance to dress up as ‘Flappers ‘ - the original ‘it’ girls. Our visitors of all ages loved trying on the sparkling head bands and fabulous feather bowers and posing for a photo or two with a cocktail shaker poised in one hand and a delicious ‘mocktail’ recipe to take home in the other.

Music and entertainment was provided by the wonderful dancers from Chloe Academy of Dance a Coventry Based school, who taught some unsuspecting visitors how to Charleston! They ended the weekend in style with an amazing and glittering Charleston performance.

Easter Activities

We decided to try something new for this years Easter holidays, especially planned for our very youngest of visitors – Storytelling for the under fives!

The first session was yesterday and it went brilliantly we had great fun telling stories, playing musical instruments and “Beep Beeping” along to the most popular story ‘ Little Red Car’.
Please come along to our next two story telling sessions which are free drop in sessions on Wednesday 20th and Wednesday 27th April at 11 – 12 on the mezzanine gallery and join in the fun.

CTM Facilitators

Facilitator Blog - 2011 so far...

It’s been a busy and exciting start to the new year and we’re really pleased with how our themed family learning weekends have been going. Our ‘Through the Decades’ weekends started in January with a closer look at the Victorians, and last week we had our Edwardian weekend. It’s been really lovely to see families having a go at the timeline quiz and drawing trails, and really working together to find the answers. People have had lots of fun trying on bonnets and top hats, while finding out more about how people lived in times gone past. We’re really looking forward to our next Through the Decades weekend in March where we’ll be revisiting the Roaring Twenties – it has been great fun for us finding out all about flapper fashion and this age of decadence. We’ll be dancing the Charleston and learning how to make our very own ‘Mocktails’ (child-friendly, alcohol free cocktails!)



January also saw our Storytelling Weekend as part of National Storytelling week. We were very lucky to have Lady Godiva, aka Pru Poretta, come in again this year to hold some very special storytelling sessions for our younger visitors. This year she also brought Kushumika with her and together they told wonderful stories and had their audiences entranced. All the children really enjoyed this, and I have to say I loved it too - I could have listened all day! Downstairs in the Museum, children created their own stories and turned them into small books or comic strips to take home with them. Thanks to everyone who came and had a go. As well as our 1920s weekend to look forward to we’ve also got our Land Speed Record Weekend in a couple of weeks (19th-20th February) where we’ll be making and racing balloon powered cars, and our Women’s History Weekend at the beginning of March (5th-6th) to coincide with International Women’s day and the Coventry Women’s Festival. We’ll be discovering all about the vital roles women played during the Second World War and there will be a Women’s History Trail that visitors can follow around the museum.

Phew! With all this going on I guess I’d better go and do some work! Hope we see some of you at our weekends very soon! Naomi

A look back at 2010 by the Museum's Facilitators

Wow, I can’t believe 2010 is nearly over! We’ve had such a busy and exciting year. 2010 saw us really get going with our themed weekend events. Throughout the year we’ve had many varied activities for all our visitors to take part in over the weekends. In January we kicked off with our Storytelling weekend, to tie in with National Storytelling week – and had Lady Godiva (the lovely Pru Poretta) come in and tell her story to the little ones.

In March Coventry Women’s Festival was once again held at the Museum, and we put together a Women’s History trail around the museum to go with it, as well as focusing on all the wonderful work women did during the Second World War in our Blitz area.

In July we had our first ever Land Speed Record weekend, which was a massive hit! We saw the competitive side of our visitors as they built and raced balloon powered cars! It went so well in fact that we had another Land Speed Record weekend in October, and this time the Bloodhound SSC team came in and brought Thrust SSC Driver Andy Green with them!

Throughout the summer holidays, visitors may have spotted us in the Ice Cream Dream Machines exhibition. Sadly we weren’t selling actual ice creams (although we looked as though we might be!), but we did have fun showing people how Ice cream was made in Victorian times, and challenging people to our fun Ice Cream quiz!

Drawing the year to a close we had a spooky Halloween in October, our Road Safety weekend in November, and we’ve just rounded off our Wartime Christmas weekends!

As well as all the weekend events we’ve put together this year we also developed our new Tactile Tour. We developed the tour for blind and partially sighted visitors and worked with some students from Hereward College, who gave us some excellent ideas. We were very pleased when we heard we’d been awarded funding from the CultureLink project to develop our tour and help improve access for blind and visually impaired visitors to the museum. As part of this exciting project we held a workshop where blind and partially sighted participants used cameras to photograph their experiences of the Tactile Tour. In December we showcased an amazing exhibition called My Mind’s Eye, which displayed some of their photos. It was a privilege to work with these people, their enthusiasm and open mindedness was incredible, and the photos they produced were amazing!

Looking forward now to 2011 and things won’t get any less busy! We’re stepping up the program of weekend events, repeating many of the popular ones from this year and adding in a new series of weekends which will take our visitors ‘Through The Decades’! Starting in January we will be taking visitors on a time travelling adventure that will visit a different decade each month throughout the year!

We also hope to develop the work we have begun with the Tactile Tour and photography workshop, and hope to continue improving access for all at the museum.

Thanks so much to everyone who came and took part in any of our activities this year! It’s been really fantastic and we hope to see many of you back again in 2011!

See what's on on 2011