News & Events

News Archive (takes you to a page of news articles from previous months)

This page will be updated regularly so that you can keep up to date with what's going on at the museum. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please get in touch.

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Riddled with Disease!

Half Term event at the George Marshall Medical Museum

As part of Visit Worcester's Shakespeare in Worcester Half Term events, the George Marshall Medical Museum is putting on a self-guided tour for our visitors between Monday 13th and Friday 17th February 2012.

Bring your family along to try your hand at being a lyrical detective! Follow our self-guided trail around the Museum, using riddles and rhymes as clues to find objects as you go. Once you've discovered all ten, try your hand at creating your very own rhyme based on an object of the Curator's choice.

After the event, trail answers will be posted here and on our facebook page facebook.com/themedicalmuseum, so don't spoil the answers for any of our other detectives! The Curator's favourite riddle will also be posted here...so watch this space!

For other events in Worcester during Half Term, click on the following link to go to Visit Worcester's information page: visitworcester.com.

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Nurturing Worcestershire's Treasures

Laura Butland, Graduate Trainee at the Museum, has been working with us since July 2010. She is one of five graduate trainees working across six different heritage sites in Worcestershire, all of whom are learning the practical skills needed to pursue a career in the heritage sector. If you would like to know what each of the trainees is currently working on, please click on the link below for their current newsletter. This will open in a new window in your internet browser.

Trainee newsletter (.pdf)

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PGCE students get stuck in

A bunch of PGCE History students from the University of Worcester came to the Museum on Monday 16th December with their tutor to work with some objects from our collection and try to create some activities based upon those objects. They had some amazing ideas and they'll hopefully come back to us to loan some objects to use as part of their student placements in secondary schools this year.

PGCE from the University of Worcester working on object selection for their loans box activities

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Collection News...

We have just found out that a set of porcelain and earthenware medicine spoons in our collection was originally donated to George Marshall by a Mr. Paul Houghton in 1973. Mr. Houghton was consultant surgeon at Ronkswood Hospital and the former Worcester Royal Infirmary. You can see some of these in our display of objects relating to medicine used in the home: "Home and Domestic Care".

The original photograph of the donated medicine spoons

Image © Charles Hastings Education Centre

If you think you or somebody you know donated an object to the Museum before 2003 then please get in touch. We are currently reviewing the collection and trying to source the provenance for all objects without paperwork. It's a big job!

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Oral History Transcription

So far we have had an amazing response to our call for volunteer transcribers on the Jobs Desk organised by the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. We are sending out copies of oral histories to the interested parties to be transcribed and summarised.

The aim is to have all of our oral history collection transcribed, themed and catalogued by the end of 2012. We will then be able to use oral histories in future research and take clips of the audio to be used in our current oral history display in the Museum. Click here for our 'Volunteers' page.

We have also been asked to prepare some clips for use at The Hive. Opening in Worcester in the summer of 2012, the Hive will be an integrated Public and University Library as well as a centre for archives and history. It will be the first of its kind in Europe.

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You can download a .pdf copy of our current Newsletter by clicking on the link below. This will open as a new page in your internet browser.

Newsletter(.pdf file)

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We are on Facebook

Check out our new page on Facebook.

facebook.com/themedicalmuseum

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Season's Greetings!

To celebrate the festive season, we will be opening one day of our advent calendar each day in the run up to Christmas and sharing each day's 'prize' with you on Facebook! Unlike the usual advent calendar, each day will reveal an image of part of our collection not usually on open display. We don't know about you, but we think this is far better than chocolate in the morning (and helps keep the pounds off as well)...

Click on this link to see today's advent: GMMM Advent Calendar

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Worcester Royal Infirmary project

The Infirmary project is now on Facebook. Follow the link below to find out more:

The Infirmary, Worcester

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Medical art

Claire Jones is a medical artist who specialises in illustrating the body and how it works. She spent a morning in the Museum with the idea of drawing one of our instruments. In the end it was an ordinary pair of sterilizing forceps which took her fancy and she has recently sent over the final result. I'm sure you'll agree the effect is quite impressive:

You can take a look at Claire's blog here: http://www.claire-jones.com/blog/

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New exhibition!

Beckie Payne BA (Hons) is a recent Fine Art graduate from the University of Worcester. She is fascinated with identity and studied our death masks to create a number of brilliant mixed media sculptures for her final exam. Until March 2012, we are lucky to be able to display a selection of her fabulous pieces here at the museum. Why not pop in and take a look?

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New resources

Thanks to our work experience student from New College, Worcester, and Small Grants funding from our Museum Development Officer, we are now able to offer a podcast that aims to guide visually impaired visitors around the Museum, describing key objects in the cases and highlighting physical features of the space and how to access facilities in the building. We have five iPod Nanos with attached iTells (from Cobolt Speechmaster), as well as five sets of headphones. We will also have large print versions of this guide available to read. If you or someone you know would be interested in test-driving this equipment, please get in touch with the Curator.

The podcasts will be available to download from the website shortly to enable visitors to access the information in advance of a visit. In the meantime, we are happy to email them on application.

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