Bringing history to a wider audience
WIndsor: Children explore castle’s past in outreach scheme
Windsor Castle is bringing 1,000 years of history directly into classrooms with its newly expanded outreach programme.
The Royal Collection Trust is offering in-person and online sessions to schools in the UK and around the world to make the royal residence accessible to a wider audience.
Windsor Castle is the oldest inhabited castle in the world and these outreach and virtual school learning sessions remove some of the barriers faced by teachers when arranging on-site visits, like distance or cost of travel.
Royal Collection Trust Learning Manager Gordon Ferguson said: “These sessions are a wonderful opportunity to bring Windsor Castle and the Royal Collection to a wider and more diverse audience.
“Through our outreach sessions, it has been so rewarding to connect with more schools in the local area and reach children who may never have visited the Castle before, and the online sessions have allowed us to reach schools all over the country and around the world, even as far as Canada and Brazil.”
Around 40,000 school pupils made visits to the site or attended online sessions in the last academic year.
All the sessions are tailored for early years, primary and secondary schools and fit with the curricular aims of each school, with subjects ranging from the history of knights to exploring Queen Victoria’s life at the Castle.
In outreach sessions, learning officers travel to schools in and around Windsor, including Slough and Maidenhead, to deliver fun and interactive sessions with artefacts, replica regalia and armour for role play, dressing up, storytelling and discussion.
In virtual sessions, learning officers deliver the interactive workshops offered at Windsor Castle to individual classes or whole school assemblies online.
In-person visits to Windsor Castle continue to be available throughout the year, ranging from early years storytelling sessions to A-Level workshops allowing students to sketch while viewing Leonardo da Vinci’s original drawings.
School sessions are available throughout the week, with the option to visit on a day when the Castle is closed to the public for exclusive access to the State Rooms and Learning Centre.
Bookings for in-person school visits in the next academic year open after the Easter break.
Travel subsidy and access schemes are available to ensure visits are possible for schools working with children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Free online school resources are also available for educational visits at The King’s official residences in London, Windsor and Edinburgh, at the Royal Mews and The King’s Galleries.
Royal Collection Trust also works with a range of community organisations to make the Royal Residences, Mews and Galleries accessible to as many people as possible.
Visit www.rct.uk/discover /school-visits for more.