A Hub funded project at Woodhorn Museum

•To develop an archive based session for secondary schools in South East Northumberland that would look at an historical topic based around mining and communities.

•Consultation with teachers led to the topic of the 1984 miner’s strike.

•Production of resources for KS 3 and 4 pupils that can be embedded into Woodhorns core offer.

•Tour of the striking miner exhibition at Woodhorn.

•Investigation of archive material.

•Question and answer session with ex-mining volunteers.

•Debate.

•As an organic process the soap box element became a picket line debate.

•Are you for or against?

•Understanding other viewpoints – the power of empathy.

•Taking it to heart – the pupils really got on board and gave real emotional viewpoints leading to a heated and engaging debate.

•Overall success producing a workshop that can be the basis for similar sessions.

•Lasting relationships with volunteers and also secondary schools who ‘will be back in the future’

• We worked with 3 schools consisting of 10 sessions and incorporating 564 pupils.

•We formed lasting relationships with all the volunteers that participated.

•Evaluation proved the benefit of the volunteer session, which had a profound and lasting impact upon the pupils.

•Thank you for planning the fantastic day...our students gained so much from it’ Jenna Parry, Norham Community College.

•I also enjoyed sharing my mining experience...I feel I have helped them progress greatly with this project...I could have spent all day and night sharing my experiences! Ken Sinclair, volunteer.