Birmingham Cultural Capital trip
Birmingham is a wonderfully diverse city with hundreds of exciting attractions and masses of history and culture to immerse oneself in. The world-class history museum in Birmingham’s centre is the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which boasts over 40 galleries to explore; displaying art, social history, archaeology and ethnography. To celebrate this, on the 2nd July, 22 Year 9 students had the opportunity through Aimhigher Plus, to visit the centre of town and take a look at all the exhibitions and galleries at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, with a stop off at Aston University in the afternoon.
While at the museum, students were challenged to find their 3 favourite pieces of art in the exhibitions and discuss why they enjoyed them, and came up with some really insightful thoughts about the art work. The museum is currently hosting ‘Dippy the Dinosaur’, the impressive 21.3 metres long, 4.3 metres wide and 4.25 metres high giant diplodocus skeleton, which is on tour around the UK from London’s National History Museum. Dippy was enormous, and the palaeontology exhibition about dinosaurs was very interesting. After Dippy, we discovered the collections the museum has to offer, including the Romans, World War 2, the Victorian era, Ancient Greece and the history of Birmingham. Students were asked to voluntarily complete activity packs based on the collections, to win a prize! A big congratulations to Courtney Moratelli and Dian McNickle, who put the most effort into their work and received prizes for completing their activities!
In the afternoon, we travelled to the University of Aston and took part in a great campus Quest. Students worked in groups with university students to solve riddles and puzzles and find their way to the next clue around campus. Students did really well, despite the hot day, and were all rewarded with ice lollies for their efforts! There were also prizes for the team that completed all the puzzles first. Students really enjoyed the competitive aspect of the challenge while also learning a lot about the university.
What did our students think?
Regarding the museum, our students said “It was interesting seeing Dippy, the art and the sculptures” and “learning about different religions /cultures and some history”.
Above all, the campus quest at Aston was a real hit! All students who gave us feedback, said they enjoyed the treasure hunt.
“It was fun seeing what University was like”, “It was a fun day!”
When asked about Aston University, most students said the campus was bigger than expected. “Everything is on campus, for example, the gym, dormitories and the law business school”. The students learnt that at Aston“there are 180 subjects to choose from” and “if you go to University, you should choose something you enjoy”.
As a result, all of the students who took part in our evaluation of the day, said they would possibly or definitely consider applying to Aston or another university in the future.
The students were a credit to the school and took part in all the activities of the day.
By visiting universities in the nearby area, Aimhigher Plus is helping to raise aspirations of our students. Through academic information, the promotion of transferable skills and through experiences such as this one, students gain an insight into Higher Education and all it has to offer.
