As part of National Flash Fiction Day, Wednesday 16th May, the innovative Flashtag writing collective are travelling across the city of Manchester to perform a number of pieces of short fiction to the city’s masses. They will be reading their flash fiction to the general public in and around a number of iconic buildings and locations such as Manchester Museum, The Cornerhouse, John Rylands Library and The People’s History Museum (to name but a few of the 27 venues and public spaces) You can follow their progress on the #flashtag Twitter hashtag
Knitting for a good cause
Manchester Museum’s insect collections have been used as inspiration for these banners – knitted creatures are required to add to the playground surrounds.
Adult Learners’ Week at the Manchester Museum
12-18 May sees lots of events across Manchester and the UK to celebrate Adult Learners’ Week.
At the Museum we have two events specially put on for the week.
On Sunday 13 May 11am -12noon Cairo Chaos will be visiting Unearthed Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Museum.. With the esteemed poet extraordinaire, Toot and Carboot in collaboration with the terrifyingly talented magician, Watt the Heka. More ‘laffs than a safari full of mere cats. More rhythm than a Nile river cruise. Hear words and see magic in a story. That will amaze baffle and amuse. Open to mummies, daddies and young pharaohs.
And then on Friday 18 May 6.30-8.30pm, for Museums at Night and Adult Learners week, the After Hours is an invitation to our tranquil secret gardens in the city. Play croquet on our allotment with a glass of pimms, go into our secret gothic tower to see the treasures of our herbarium and discover how nature can make you feel happy. Wander through the meadows of Nature Discovery or make your own herbal pampering potion in Living Worlds.
Tours of the Secret Gothic tower
6.45-7.15pm and 7.30-8pm
Book on the night: Please note that numbers of spaces are extremely limited so please come early.
Herbal pampering drop in workshop led by Jesper Lauder in association with Cracking Good Food.
Music provided by Samson and Delilah www.samsonanddelilahmusic.co.uk
Poetry reading in the Manchester Museum Cafe
On Wednesday 9 May from 6pm you can hear or recite poems in the Manchester Museum café and help support Oxfam. Poetica is an established and eclectic Manchester poetry group whose members have recited poems, some inspired by the Museum’s collections, over the last couple of years.
All our welcome.
Wild food forage at the Manchester Museum
This Saturday we are hoping for some sunny spots in the afternoon for the Spring Wild Food Forage. As part of Urban Naturalist, local food forager Jesper Lauder in association with Cracking Good Food, are setting off on a mini forage walk from Manchester Museum. Who knows what edible plants they will find growing in the heart of Manchester.
There are only a few places left on the Urban Naturalist event on Saturday 28 April. To check if there are any spaces ring 0161 275 2648.
Sat 28 April: Spring wild food forage
Spring wild food forage with Jesper Launder, in association with Cracking Good Food. By the end of April the early edible springtime shoots are at their very best for harvest. Large enough but still tender to eat. This foraging walk will introduce some of our most familiar and tasty spring wild foods, offering insight into the many ways they can be eaten, and how to go about safely identifying them.
2-4pm
Sat 28 May: Windowsill gardening
Sunflowers, lettuce and herbs are all plants you can grown on your windowsill – some plants to start growing early and some to grow all the way. Join our friends from Hulme Community Garden Centre in this practical workshop to find out how to use the sun through your window.
Sat 30 June: Moths
Cabbage whites were spotted in the Museum allotment last year. Our moth experts Phil Rispin and Michael Dockery will be putting out the moth traps on Friday night – the workshop on Saturday will give you top tips on how to identify moths found in Manchester’s gardens and parks.
Urban Naturalist is a programme of friendly, practical workshops for adults run by leading naturalists. From wild food-foraging and composting to bird song and insect identification, explore biodiversity on our doorstep
William Boyd Dawkins – Manchester Museum’s ice age curator
Ice age mammals and environmental change
On Thursday 26th April 2012 Professor Adrian Lister (Natural History Museum) will give a lecture
This is the inaugural Sir William Boyd Dawkins lecture in Quaternary Science and Geoarchaeology. This annual lecture is being organised by Professor Jamie Woodward (Geography, School of Environment and Development) in collaboration with the Manchester Museum to mark the pioneering contribution of Sir William Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929) to the study of ice age fauna and his fundamental contributions to the development of Manchester Museum and the teaching of Geology and Archaeology in the University.
Boyd Dawkins came to Manchester in 1869 when he was appointed curator of the natural history collections at the old Manchester Museum on Peter Street. He also lectured in Geology at Owens College and spent most of the rest of his active life in various roles within the University and the Museum. He established an international reputation for his work on the fossils of ice age mammals.
Adrian Lister is a world authority on ice age mammals and Quaternary environmental change. This lecture will celebrate Boyd Dawkins’ legacy and set out recent advances in this field. William Boyd Dawkins is featured in the new Ancient Worlds galleries at the Manchester Museum, which open on 30th October 2012.
Museum Meets works with partner organisations on adult programmes. The Museum is delighted to be hosting this talk organised by the Confucius Institute.
| With Dr Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library
Continuing with our popular series of free public talks on China , Dr Frances Wood, one of the UK’s leading authorities on Chinese literature, will be joining us to talk about the first Chinese books in the UK. The collections of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), physician to QueenAnne and the man who introduced chocolate to a grateful British public, were used to found the British Museum. He collected everything from natural history specimens (stuffed alligators from his time in Jamaica) to fine editions of the Bible and his printed book collection included a fine range of Chinese books from the late Ming and early Qing periods. Many collectors of the time had single Chinese volumes as ‘specimens’ but Sloane’s recently re-discovered Chinese collection ran from Buddhism and Confucianism through geography to literature and painting manuals, most collected for him in China by members of the East India Company who did not know a word of the language. |
The first Chinese books in London: the collection of Sir Hans Sloane
Wednesday 25 April 2012, 1pm – 2pm, Kanaris Theatre, Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, M13
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Alan Turing and Life’s Enigma and Turing’s Sunflowers
The latest exhibition at the Manchester Museum, is Alan Turing and his Life’s Enigma. It’s Inspired by 1950s design and combining Alan Turing’s notes with museum objects, this exhibition documents Turing’s investigation into one of the great mysteries of nature: how complex shapes and patterns arise from simple balls of cells.
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century. Best known as a pioneer in the development of the computer and for helping crack the Enigma code during World War II, Alan Turing also made a single contribution to biology. From 1948 until his death in 1954, Turing worked on the early computers at The University of Manchester, working in the building next door to The Manchester Museum. At a time when people knew very little about genetics or DNA, Turing used the early computer to try to crack how a soup of cells and chemicals could transform itself and grow into complex natural shapes – a subject known as morphogenesis. In an incredible article published in 1952, Turing suggested that everything from the spots and stripes on animals to the arrangement of pine cones and flowers could be explained by the interactions between two chemicals. Turing’s work in this area is intimately connected with the timing of his trial and conviction for homosexuality, and his subsequent ‘treatment’ with a course of chemical injections.
Turing’s Sunflowers is a project led by Manchester Science Festival and MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry) for a mass planting of sunflowers as part of an experiment to solve the mathematical riddle that Turing worked on before his death in 1954. Families to the Manchester Museum over the Easter holidays have been planting sunflowers to grow at home. If you would like to participate in this mass experiment you can find out more by visiting the Manchester Science Festival website. People will be growing sunflowers in allotments, parks and gardens across Manchester. There will be on-line resources and events later in the year to help you count the spirals in the sunflower heads.
Here at the Manchester Museum we’ll be planting sunflowers in our allotment – hopefully there will be enough sun in the courtyard for them to grow tall.
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SAN’AT MAHMUDOVA from Uzbekistan dancing in the Manchester Museum as part of the Afterhours
SAN’AT MAHMUDOVA from Uzbekistan dancing in the Manchester Museum as part of the Afterhours. The evening also included a panel discussion about the ethics of the UK clothing industry with speakers from unchosen, Stop the Traffik and Sticthed Up clothing collective, after a screening of documentary, fashions dirty secrets. This all took place in Manchester Musuem which owes it’s building and collections to the wealth of the Manchester cotton trade. On show were also photographs of weavers from Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s from collector Elsie McDougall and cotton plants from the herbarium store.
Urban Naturalist: Frogs, Toads and Newts
This Saturday 31 March sees our next Urban Naturalist and it’s all about Frogs, Toads and Newts .
Top tips on how to identify the 5 five amphibians that live in Manchester’s gardens and parks. Get close to a Manchester toads and meet Matt Wilson to find out more amphibian friendly gardens.
2-4pm. Urban Naturalist is a programme of friendly, practical workshops run by leading naturalists. From wild food-foraging and composting to bird song and insect identification, explore biodiversity on our doorstep.
Price: Book on 0161 275 2648, £3, adults
