Gallery Oldham developed a series of regular, informal museum sessions that enabled participants to encounter surprising objects from the natural history collections that were themed around bees, mammals, birds and plants. Each session explained the specimen, its context, the story connected with the specimen and the wider perspective of the specimen within its habitat, touching on ecology, nature conservation and wildlife recording.

For the session on Bees, participants explored items from the collections, looked at the museum’s bee hive, tasted different kinds of honey and other food and drink containing honey. The curator, Patricia Francis, talked about pollination and the importance of bees and making them welcome in gardens and window boxes.

An additional part to the project involved taking the natural heritage collections out to older people in residential communities as part of a ‘Roving Theatre Intervention’, working with partnership with Oldham Arts Development and Oldham Theatre Workshop.

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