Museum of East Anglian Life
Projects

Come along to the Museum of East Anglian Life and see our brand new exhibition, Happy Days. Created by the Museum in partnership with Lavenham Primary School.

What makes you happy? Is it playing on your Wii? Spending time with your family? Playing with your friends? Or even going to school? These are some of the questions that the Museum of East Anglian Life put to Class 3 at Lavenham Primary School. The museum then asked Class 3 to think about what may have made a Victorian child happy. The children researched Victorian life, handled Victorian toys from the museum collections and visited the museum to gather more information.

The children presented their findings and were surprised to find t

hat many of the things that they believed made Victorian children happy also made them happy!

The Museum with Lavenham Primary School will be launching the exhibition – Happy Days - created from the children’s hard work on Wednesday 28^th April 2010 at the Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket. The exhibition contains objects chosen by Class 3, labels written by the children and their own poetry and art.

Jo Rooks, the Museum Learning Officer, says “This was a fantastic project to be involved with. All of the children in class 3 worked really hard and discovered lots about Victorian life. We were really surprised to discover that modern children have a lot in common with Victorian children and many of the same things that made children happy 150 years ago make them happy today!”

The exhibition will be running from the 28^th April until the 31^st October 2010.

For more details Tel: 01449 612229

Website: www.eastanglianlife.org.uk

Email: enquiries@eastanglianlife.org.uk

From March to April 2010 the Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket is playing host to the ARC-Addington Fund photographic exhibition ‘Food and Farming An Urban Perspective’. The exhibition showcases a range of photographs taken in rural locations around Britain by Kevin Foord, a London based fashion photographer, and accompanied by captions from author, Richard Benson.

The photographs – which include animals, working machinery and scenery - were created as part of a project to record images of contemporary British Agriculture, but evolved into something more idiosyncratic. When the pictures were taken between 2005 and 2007, Kevin and Richard had no intention of showing the photographs but a conversation led them to wonder if a selection of the images, with explanatory text, could help the ARC-Addington Fund in its attempts to foster understanding between farming and urban communities.

The ARC-Addington fund was founded in 2001 as the Churches’ response to the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease and is partly named after Canon Richard Addington who inspired the original Addington Fund in East Anglia.  His principles of providing financial support combined with pastoral care live on to this day.

The fund is one of the Farming Help charities and helps to maintain the economic and social foundations of the farming community.  It can help farmers in one of three main ways: the Strategic Rural Housing Scheme which provides housing for farmers who have to leave their farm and cannot find anywhere suitable to live, the Trustees’ Discretionary Fund which can provide a cash grant towards unforeseen expenditure, and finally the Trevorva Barns project in Cornwall which provides affordable housing specifically for those who work in, or are retiring from, land-based employment.

Lisa Harris, Collections Manager at the Museum says: ‘As a result of the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001 a total of £10.3 million was distributed by the ARC-Addington Fund through over 22,000 applications. This is an incredible example of what can be achieved by the generosity of the public and churches in times of crisis within our farming communities.

We hope that visitors to the exhibition will be challenged to think about where their food comes from and why farming is important in the 21^st century, as well as learning more about the work of the ARC-Addington Fund.’

The exhibition ‘Food and Farming An Urban Perspective’ can be viewed at the Museum of East Anglian Life from now until the 12^th April 2010.

Grant awarded  But...

After a four year build up, and a huge amount of hard work our bid for development funds has been conditionally approved. We asked for £2.6m to develop Abbots Hall, the walled garden, the stables, Crowe Street cottages, and replace the conservatory. The HLF have granted us £1.771m on the condition that we raise the balance of  £830k by February 2009. We are half way there already, however if we fail to reach our target the grant could be lost. We have therefore decided to launch the MEAL Appeal to invite donations to close the gap. Watch the Press and this website to see how you can contribute.

Read about our development project here.