Learning Programmes with Portraits

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• Why develop a learning programme
• What programme will you run?
• How to develop a learning programme
• Who is your programme for?
• Evaluation
• Themes around Portraiture
• Case Studies
• Festivals and National Events
• Acknowledgements
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Family History and Portraits

Family History is a growth area for adult learners. The success of television programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are? has lead to an upsurge in people carrying out research into their family history. In May 2007 The National History Show at Olympia had a vast number of museums and archives with stalls on family history.

Family History attracts people from all kinds of social and cultural backgrounds. The Culture on Demand audience engagement report found that projects on local identity and every day life - which are linked to Family History - attracted audiences from lower socio-economic groups and BME communities.

Portraits are an important documentary and visual source for family historians. The best way to assist with portraiture and family history is to provide information on:

• Dating and reading portraits through clothes, hairstyle, local area etc
• Background social and historical information.
• Photographic technologies.

The kinds of portraits used for Family History will usually be army, wedding, school or family photographs.

Many museums, galleries and sites run Family History workshops. A toolkit on running Family History Workshops is downloadable from the Museums and Gallery Month website:

http://www.mgm.org.uk

Some other useful websites and example of good practice are listed below:

• The Imperial War Museum website is more textual records based but has potential to assist with reading uniforms in old photographs etc. http://www.iwm.org.uk/server/show/nav.00100a
• Bolton Museum and Archives Service have a page dedicated to family history: http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/bolton-archives/family-history/
• Dover Museum has a good page on researching family history http://www.dover.gov.uk/museum/resource/articles/famhist.asp
• Rotherham Museum have put together a Family History Resource Pack http://www.mylearning.org
• 24 Hour Museum published an article on Family History Days for Museums and Galleries Month: http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART47381.html