Reopened museum an educational treat

by Shamar Blunt

Modern, interactive, and fun – these were the words used to describe the Barbados Museum & Historical Society’s latest offerings for its visitors in the form of their newly launched children’s gallery.

During Thursday’s opening ceremony, the newly reopened museum dubbed the Explore! Children’s Gallery, was reimagined with help from the Maria Holder Memorial Trust, as an exciting new addition to the Barbados Museum, which is aimed at delivering an educational but fun experience for children of all ages to enjoy while visiting the historic site.

While speaking to Barbados TODAY, Deputy Director of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society, Kevin Farmer, said the old children’s museum was in desperate need of modernisation for many years, with the new envisioned space moving from concept to reality thanks to support of the Maria Holder Memorial Trust.

“The Barbados Museum and Historical Society has always had a children’s museum since 1945, what has happened over many years, as has happened in all things when you simply do not have the funding to keep up with the technology, was that by 2013 an exhibition that has been up since 1992, had simply outlived its usefulness. We decided that there needed to be a change.

“What we ended up with, was really looking at a museum, recognizing that we simple did not have the funds in house to make it happen.

We turned to the Maria Holder Memorial Trust who had an interest in not only early childhood education but education of children in general,” he said.

When asked what children could expect from the new exhibit, Farmer insisted that the showcase was like nothing seen on the island before, with it being designed from the ground up with creativity and enjoyment in mind.

“What you can expect is a museum exhibition like nothing you have ever seen before.

“It is entirely interactive, it is a space in which children can play with anything from trying to create planes in a wind tunnel, to finding out about renewable energy and playing a game around that, to actually playing with a digital interactive that allows them to do surgery. At the same time exploring concepts of sound, learning about the human body, and exploring how they can build things and how built things work.

“That is a lot in a mouthful, but they really have to come explore it, play with it, and I think that they will be extremely happy, as well as their parents,” Farmer added.

Jane Armstrong, project coordinator behind the new exhibit and now consultant for the Maria Holder Memorial Trust, said that the new display was an exciting and important development for the charitable organisation, as one of their goals on the island is to support the expansion of educational opportunities for all children.

“It’s important for us to have partners to do our work; youth, children, early education is one of our key areas, but we can’t do these things without partners. This project was particularly collaborative as it needed to be with different partners and stakeholders in order to plan it and get it right.”