Museum receives Sandford Award

The Sandford Award is an independently judged, quality assured assessment of education programmes at heritage sites, museums, archives and collections across the British Isles.

To achieve the rigorous assessment criteria, organisations must demonstrate the delivery of high quality heritage education.

A judging team from the Sandford Awards visited the Museum in the summer and were impressed with our team’s use of the natural environment as a resource for teaching history.

They commented: “The Weald & Downland Living Museum offers a unique experience covering a thousand years of history on one site and providing an extraordinary range of learning opportunities. The learning programme provides immersive, engaging, multi-sensory experiences for all pupils and visitors which encourage extremely high levels of participation, engagement and inspiring learning.”

“Visitors can only but be impressed with the team’s use of the natural environment as a resource for teaching history – from coppicing of woodland to gardens full of heritage herbs, fruit and vegetables. The team has done an excellent job in rejuvenating the learning programme post Covid 19 and has already returned to strong school visit numbers – a testament to the high quality visit which the museum offers.”

Museum Director, Simon Wardell, commented: “I would first like to congratulate and thank the collective efforts of our Learning Team as well as the many volunteers and interpreters for their hard work and dedication in creating and fulfilling our now multi-award winning education offering. As an independent, not-for-profit organisation, we are incredibly proud to receive such a prestigious award.”

“We are passionate about and committed to offering immersive and memorable outdoor learning opportunities for young people. Our newly launched and self-funded Travel Bursary Scheme is testament to this. The receipt of this award makes us more determined to welcome as many school groups as we can to bring learning to life.”