Hey Blog! For the second time in a row, this is another environmental issues post. This time we went to Derby Museums, for a nationwide project known as Wild Escape.
My Dad works in Derby, so we hitched a lift with him to get there. There were, however, five hours between arriving at 8 and the workshop at 1. This was the perfect time to go into the Book Café, a very nice café in Derby where there are most of the cakes you could come up with and a friendly atmosphere. We sometimes do this when we go to Derby, and it’s always fun. We had a drink each and read our books, and then I had a ‘Bakewell Blondie’ and Mum had another coffee. This meant she was absolutely buzzing while we were walking to the museum.
At the moment Derby Museums are hosting an art exhibition on the work of the 18th century painter William Hogarth. While we waited for the other families attending the event, we popped in and had a look. There wasn’t much time, so we will probably go again, in which case it is likely to end up on this blog. However, we went down and met the member of the museum staff who was running the event, and when everyone had arrived, we started.
The first thing on the agenda was to go around the nature gallery and find your favourite animal. This could be because you had similar personalities, you looked something like them, or anything that meant you liked them. I chose the badger, as we share some personality traits and they are nice animals. Everybody chose different things, for instance someone chose a mole, another a red squirrel, another a kingfisher. We then did a poster making activity. There were four different poster subjects – badger, fox, wildcat, and hedgehog – and we had to make a poster with what we already knew and the knowledge they provided on printouts. There was one twist to this – we had to make it with only five words. Or less. I got the badger one – lucky, I know quite a lot about them and was able to include quite a bit of what I knew. If you want to know more about these stripy mammals, see last year’s ‘Badger Badger Badger’ post in which I talked about these amazing creatures in lots more detail.
Once we had made our posters, we went along to the activity room. In here there were four strips of cloth that we had the task of painting to make banners for the Wild Escape on Earth Day. This is when all the animals in the museum go out and “escape”, to remind us of the question “What would they do if they could?” Would they be able to get to their own habitat? The answer, with all the habitat loss, is probably no. However, in Derbyshire, badgers and foxes, and even hedgehogs, would almost certainly find somewhere, though probably not wildcats! But as the museum is in the city centre of Derby, the question is more “Would they be able to cross the roads safely or not before they got there?”!
When we had finished painting the banners, it was time to wrap up and go. It was certainly fun, though, and if I am free, I would like to go to the escape on Earth Day!