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New guide to Penlee House
John Daniel Centre has produced a new Easy Read Guide to Penlee
More
+44 (0)1736 363625
Opening times
Monday to Saturday (closed Sundays)
CURRENT HOURS
10.00 am - 5.00 pm
(last admission 4.30pm)
Admission £4.50 adults,
£3.00 concessions,
under 18s FREE
ADMISSION FREE ON SATURDAYS
WINTER HOURS
From 1 October
to Good Friday:
10.30am - 4.30pm
(last admission 4.00pm)
WINNER Cornwall Tourism Awards GOLD
South West Tourism Excellence Awards GOLD
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Education News
French Work Experience Student comes to Penlee!
Yoann Tregaro from College Saint-Gildas in Brittany has been with us this week, and has been a tremendous help with stewarding, working in the shop, photographing exhibitions and generally being an excellent asset to the gallery! Here is what he has to say about the week:
"The Work Experience in Penlee House is very interesting because you do a lot of things, in different places and with different people:
-Someone presents you the museum (the exhibition, the store…) and you learn a lot.
-You do some stewarding in the gallery, it isn’t boring because you can speak with the people who are visiting the exhibition.
-You can see a visit of a group or a school and you observe that all the children are very happy and interested in the exhibition.
-You discover a lot of jobs and techniques (the work in the little shop, how to store pottery or other things in the store, how hold different old objects, the description of pictures and how recognize the place or the date…).
-You take pictures of the exhibition so you can remember how it looks.
This museum is very interesting and the exhibition is beautiful, moreover, all the people who work in Penlee House are very very nice".
Many many thanks Yoann for all your help. Come back and see us again!
Adult Art Workshops a success
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Our art workshop for adults, 'Paper Mosaics', was a great success. It was well attended, and the participants produced some fabulous work, inspired partly by Penlee House Gallery and and the collection. Many thanks to Sue Kinley for her leadership of the workshop, and her creative and inspiring ideas.
Indications are that further workshops for adults would be welcome - so keep an eye on our 'What's On - Events' page.
Work Experience at Penlee House Gallery
by Mary Davis, Humphry Davy School
My first impression of Penlee house was that it was a very quiet art gallery, which was probably quite boring, but after spending my work experience week here I have realised that I was wrong. Penlee house was a brilliant place for me to work, the staff are all very friendly, the atmosphere of the place is really lovely and relaxing, and I was always kept busy by the tasks I was set. Throughout the week I have had a great insight into the way that museums work and all of the things that go on behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly, and I have been lucky enough to get to help with many of the tasks that must be done to ensure this happens. My week here has consisted of many jobs and activities including – helping out in the shop, preparing the Easter activities for children, assisting with primary school visits to the museum, and photocopying and saving copies of the huge collection of photographs that the museum has, but my favourite part of the week was definitely when I was given a tour of the store, and got to see all of the objects, clothing and artefacts that the museum has hidden away. After this week my impression of Penlee house has definitely changed, and also my view of how galleries and museums are run, as I now realise that there is so much to do to ensure the successful running of a museum, and it in fact requires lots of time and effort, and I am very glad that I got to spend my work experience week seeing all of this for myself.
Mabe CP School's visit to Penlee House
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Class 3 from Mabe CP School visited us for our 'Betsy Lanyon' workshop, where they met 'Betsy', a Newlyn fishwife, and learned about her life and the pilchard fishing industry in the 1890s. They were shown around the social history museum and took part in a 'Museum Detective' activity with handling objects. Here's what they had to say about their trip:
"I learnt that children had to work when they were young and some of them didn't go to school. I enjoyed shouting out 'Hevva' and I think most of them in the class did."
"Dear Betsy, Thank you for telling me what it is like to be a fishwife. I learnt that you are not married to a fish. I enjoyed drawing you into my sketch book."
"I learnt about fishing and Victorian times."
"Dear Betsy, I really enjoyed myself, it was really nice meeting you."
"I enjoyed looking at all the things that they used to use. It was really really really fun."
"I learnt that being a fishwife wasn't easy... also I learnt that you don't have to wear your best clothes to be in a painting. I enjoyed seeing all the paintings because they were so realistic."
"Dear John, I learnt all about the olden times. I enjoyed the trip. I hope I come back."
"I learnt that Victorians used the same type of things, but they look different and use them differently."
"Dear John, Thank you for telling us about the men with the long underpants and that was really funny!"
"I enjoyed guessing what the objects were."
"Dear Betsy, Thank you for letting us sketch you, I learnt about pilchards. I enjoyed you teaching us."
'Treasures from the Earth' in line for Clore Award for Museum Learning!
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Penlee's project is on longlist of ten for £10,000 prize.
Last year, Penlee House Gallery and Museum's education team ran a series of archaeology workshops for children to coincide with the touring exhibition 'Treasures from the Earth.' Over 200 children took part in activities ranging from an archaeological 'dig', to Iron Age coin and pot making, storytelling and flintknapping. Two talks for adults also proved popular. Now the project could be in line for a major national award, as the longlist for the Clore Award for Museum Learning is announced.
The Award is administered by the Museum Prize Trust, created by the Art Fund, the Campaign for Museums, the Museums Association and National Heritage. It celebrates quality museum and gallery learning with chidren and young people and recognises achievements in learning programmes which develop the skills, knowledge, values and enjoyment of the participants.
Penlee is sharing the honours with nine other organisations nationwide, including the V & A, the Geffrye Museum, the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Yorkshire Museum.
The shortlist will be announced in May, with the £10,000 Award being made at a ceremony in London in June. Fingers crossed - and watch this space!
For more information on the Clore Award for Museum Learning, visit the Art Fund Prize website at www.artfundprize.org.uk
Penpol School takes over the Gallery!
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On Friday 11th November, Penlee House Gallery and Museum welcomed new staff for the day, in the shape of Years 5/6 at Penpol Primary School. The project is Penlee House Gallery's contribution to the Children's Commissioner's Takeover Day, an annual national event designed to get children and young people involved in a range of organisations. The Children's Commissioner works in partnership with Kids in Museums to meaningfully involve young people in a museum .
A group of 10 'art curators' from the school were invited to rehang Gallery 5, a job that requires an enormous amount of planning and preparation. The children chose art works from the gallery's collection, and worked hard on the layout, taking into consideration such things as style, colour palette, scale and the conservation requirements of the paintings. Once the layout was decided, they provided their own labels for the paintings, giving comments and in some cases, poems inspired by the picture. The final touch will be short animated films made by the children that will "bring the paintings to life", to be shown on a screen in the gallery. The whole project has provided some great opportunities for cross curricular working, combining art appreciation, creative writing, maths and science and technology skills.
Headteacher at Penpol school, Mr Paul Hodson said "We were thrilled to be asked to take part in this wonderful project and the children will never forget 'taking over the gallery'...The process of selecting twenty or so works of art from the vast range on offer has made the children study the work of the artists in great detail and this has already given the children a great love of the paintings that will probably stay with them forever."
The children's interpretation of the Newlyn School paintings will be on show from 14th November - 14th January. To see more pictures, go to our Facebook page.
Stop Press!
Penpol School's film, bringing their chosen paintings to life, is now showing in
Gallery 5 - don't miss it! And don't forget that admission is FREE every Saturday and at all times for accompanied children (up to age 18).
Christmas Storytelling
Our Christmas storytelling workshops are going very well, with 13 groups from 7 different schools booked in. Storyteller John Wallis is keeping the children spellbound with his tale of Christmas as it would have been experienced by the people of Newlyn over 100 years ago. Several of the Newlyn School paintings are woven into the story, and the children are also shown around the social history museum and take part in a 'museum detective' activity, using handling items from the collections. For more information about our storytelling activities, contact us at the Gallery.