Young Curators at the Food Museum

In October we ran our first Young Curators programme, in partnership with the Museum of the Home, Quadram Institute, the School Meals Project, and Chefs in Schools! Designed to give young people hands-on experience in museums, participants aged 16-24 collaborated with museum professionals, academics, and food experts to conduct research that will contribute to our upcoming School Dinners exhibition.

Through workshops, residentials and field trips, the Young Curators collaborated with experts from partner organisations. The Museum of the Home guided them in collecting oral histories from local residents, capturing memories of school dinners across generations. At Quadram Institute, they learned about the science of nutrition and food’s impact on health, while the School Meals Project provided insights into the evolution of school meals through time. The Curators even got to take part in an interactive cooking session led by Chefs in Schools!

Find out more about what the Young Curators got up to during the October residential trip in their own words below.

Tuesday – by Kate and Hannah

As part of the Young Curators program, we did three days of workshops. On the first day, we learned the basics of conducting an oral interview and practiced with each other. This was fun because it felt different to what we’d done before and challenged our skills; it was a very interesting topic which was developed through integrated learning of how to style questions in this manner. We hadn’t thought about oral history before this program, as it hadn’t come up in our studies and it isn’t a widely used research method. In the evening, we cooked our own nutritious meal (vegetable samosas, flatbreads, chicken drumsticks, rice and salad) from scratch, focusing on the ways in which food is prepared. This allowed us to reflect on our own previous school meals, and how healthy or unhealthy they were.

Wednesday – by Janos and Sid

On Wednesday to start with we visited Manson house- a care home in Bury St. Edmunds. We went there to record some oral histories for the first time with an older generation, to get some practice, and also get their perspectives on school dinners. It was quite difficult at times to talk in an interview style, and remember to do everything, but the communication was very educational, and we had lots of fun!

We next visited the Quadram institute in Norwich, where we were given a tour, and then got in-depth talks from the staff about nutrition, and the work they do there. We covered topics varying from the use of AI to changes in nutritional values. Everyone was really nice and passionate. It was interesting to see the varying fields of work available in the institute.

In the evening, we went to an escape room! This was a great team-building exercise, and was a great end to a busy day.

Thursday – by Owen and Fearne

On Thursday, as part of the young curator’s programme, I had a session with the school meal service about questionnaires and analysing oral history. In this session I talked with multiple people about the topics in school dinners such as nutrition, activism, diversity and free school meals.

When I learnt about these topics it made me see the importance of the stuff that happens behind school meals. I listened to oral history interviews and read the transcript. In particular, I enjoyed being able to listen to the speaker’s emotions whilst reading the transcript.

Additionally, I learnt how to create a questionnaire and how to interpret the answers. I’m looking forward to completing this programme.