An innovative digital learning programme, developed by Chichester’s Novium Museum, has been shortlisted for a prestigious national award. The museum’s ‘Virtual Field Trips’ programme, which benefits primary school pupils across the Chichester District, has been shortlisted from more than 140 entries in the Digital Culture Awards’ ‘Content Creation and Distribution’ category.
The Digital Culture Awards — from Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Network — celebrate creativity, resilience and digital innovation of the arts and culture sector. The awards are a chance to showcase and recognise the best in digital transformation, digital engagement and use of technology.
The virtual field trips were developed by The Novium Museum in 2020 in response to the challenges faced by primary schools as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bringing history to life with a combination of collection objects, actors and cross-curricular interactive activities, they are designed to bring high quality, engaging museum learning directly into the classroom.
“This is a fantastic achievement for museum,” says Councillor Roy Briscoe, Cabinet Member for Community Services and Culture at Chichester District Council. “The Content Creation and Distribution category, for which the Virtual Field Trips programme has been shortlisted, celebrates creativity and innovative uses of digital technology to deliver cultural content, and the programme certainly delivers all of that and more.
“Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the museum has embraced digital technology to keep Chichester’s history accessible to all. In a time of continued uncertainty and challenges for schools everywhere, our Virtual Field Trip programme enables children to continue to benefit from our enriching learning programme and extensive museum collection without needing to leave their classrooms. The feedback we have received from school groups that have already benefitted from our virtual field trips has been overwhelmingly positive and demonstrated a real need for our dynamic virtual learning offer.
“The programme isn’t solely a digital offering either, as each virtual field trip comes with an option to access an accompanying loan box containing real and replica artefacts, providing real hands-on learning, as well as a virtual Chichester City tour.”
Tina Hill, Senior Manager of the Digital Culture Network, says: “The Content Creation and Distribution category was very highly subscribed (we received over 140 submissions) and Virtual Field Trips from The Novium Museum has been selected as one of our four final shortlisted projects. We were incredibly impressed by the imagination and creativity in how the project brings physical museum field trips to children and young people virtually to support a wider curriculum during such a challenging time and in such an engaging way.”
The Novium Museum has been shortlisted alongside The Old Vic, Alexander Whitely Dance Company, and Open Clasp Theatre Company. The winners will be announced at a virtual awards ceremony on 20 January 2022.
A series of Roman themed virtual field trips, including Roman Army, Roman Daily Life and Britain Before the Romans, aimed at children aged 7-11 years old are available to hire from The Novium Museum now. To find out more, visit: https://www.thenovium.org/vft
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