As the school summer holidays draw to a close and kids are squeezed into their school uniforms once again we want to celebrate our wonderful summer of activities at Rochdale Pioneers Museum. 

Throughout August we were delighted to host families from around Rochdale to take part in a whole host of summer creativity.  The hands on sessions, funded by Rochdale Council’s Holiday Activity Fund saw families roll back their sleeves and get stuck in to summer, all while activity learning the co-optative values. 

During the first week families worked with Pat Collinge, a Rochdale based family nutritionist to make a delicious lunch of savoury cheesecake and salad.  They then painted stunning ceramics to take home and use again and again.  

On week two families learnt the art of puppetry, working with actor & musician Tom Byran.  Tom taught families how to move and manipulate puppets before everyone created their own puppets and performed their own show stopping performance.    

And finally families got wild with nature during woodlands week.  Working with our Education & Learning Officer Cat Jessop, families took part in an urban nature hunt and used their finds to print a colourful canvas.  They transformed sticks into magical bugs and made bug hotels, before telling stories & toasting marshmallows on an open fire under their printed canvas in the museum courtyard.  

We loved getting to know our Incredibly Pioneering families over summer.  It was wonderful to watch the children transform our building into a hive of creative activity and to see families work together to build a tool kit of new imaginative skills.   

One parent told us ‘your activities here were amazing, they were spot on and you even surprised us by the level of care and compassion that was put in’, what a compliment! We’re really proud our co-operative learning approach shone through.