Museum of Witchcraft Learning - Update

Why are witches often imagined as women? How did witch-hunters in 17th century Europe discover witches? Would you be prepared to stab a picture of someone you love, and if not why not? Why do some people think that four-leaf clovers are lucky?

These and many other questions are raised by our new learning resource which can be found at www.mowlearning.org.uk The aim of the project is to use objects from The Museum of Witchcraft Collection to spark conversations and learning about the history of witchcraft and magic, criminality and justice, scapegoating, human psychology and much more.

At the website you'll find pictures of selected objects from the Museum collection. Each photograph comes with a series of questions intended to stimulate discussion and debate (some short films will be added soon, where staff from the museum introduce each object). Weblinks are provided with each object so that students can do their own research. There's information about ways the site can be used for both teachers and learners and of course links to the main Witchcraft Museum site.

We hope that this resource will be useful not only in the history part of the Secondary school curriculum but also in areas such as Personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, Religious Education and more. We also hope that schools outside Britain and people in many other educational settings (such as youth groups, colleges, adult learners and many others) will make use of this resource.

We've created a survey to capture feedback from users, and we have access to Google data showing the number of people visiting the site. Over time we hope to add more objects and a gallery of work created by people using this resources.

What's next?

The next stage of the project is to encourage people to use the site. This is where your help could be invaluable! If you're a teacher yourself please try using this resource. If you have contacts in education who you think would benefit from the site, please send them the link. We've already got several organisations we plan to approach to raise the profile of what we're doing, but please do get in touch if you have any great ideas about marketing or individuals you feel we really should be speaking to. Thank you!

Julian Vayne