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Outside the Box at the Museum of Reading, Reading Borough Council
The Museum of Reading operates Britain’s largest and oldest loan service. Outside the Box has been a four-year project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has revitalised and extended the service and developed it into a unique partnership with over twenty museums and heritage organisations across Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.
Outside the Box has inspired poetry, storytelling, drama and role-play as well as science clubs and history projects. The project has extended to include Memory boxes that go to Care Homes and hospitals and in collaboration with Age Concern and the Alzheimers Society provide stimulating and enjoyable experiences for many older people. In many ways this is the antithesis of the public view of museums because it enables the public to get close to collections that are too often kept in store through necessity. This project makes mini museums all over Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. People that encounter these high quality museum objects in unexpected locations are then encouraged to visit the museums themselves. Most of the partner organisations are not in a position to administer their own loans service and so this project has enabled partners to provide maximum access to their collections by choosing objects to go in the loan boxes and thereby providing access to things formally in store or not available to schools. Some of the partners such as Reading Football Club do not have a suitable place for teachers to work with their memorabilia but the Football boxes are very popular and extend the reach of the club to their community. The Outside the Box partners are: Berkshire Archaeology Some of your comments: This is a vital service for older people in Reading, as it provides reminiscence therapy for people who have Alzheimer's Disease. It's also very well-loved by the schools and it's an important part of the children's learning. After all, we learn a lot from our history – or should. Reading Museum offers a unique experience to all and enables children to discover and consider items in a far more informal way. Allowing their natural curiosity for wanting to touch, weigh, smell and have a truly tactile experience enables them to discuss the item or a memory that they have associated with the subject of their enquiry in a far more natural environment. The quality of learning is immense and I would wholeheartedly recommend the museum for an award to further their good work. Not a headline grabbing idea - but these boxes are a long term project which has affected and educated a large number of children in a fun way and enhanced the lives and memories of many adults. A very worthwhile project which uses past life objects in an innovative and meaningful way. This is a marvellous scheme, and I am excited to hear that it has been extended to include other partners. I remember my children coming back from school, talking about the boxes they had opened, the objects they had handled and the work it had inspired. Long may it continue to help interesting artefacts escape from store! Outside the Box is an imaginative and innovative scheme which takes the Museum of Reading out into the community. Too often members of the general public, or young people in schools, see museums as boring places of no relevance to them, so it is good to see the museum reach out to this major part of the population. It points the way ahead for museums everywhere and deserves to be supported. As a school governor I know the schools love the loan boxes. They also like visiting the museum for school sessions and often return with their families. When so many museum loan services have closed when faced with the ever present challenges of funding and managing such a service, the Museum of Reading deserves to win this prize for its innovative way of overcoming such problems and offering support and partnership to so many other museum services. I have worked at the Museum of Reading for almost 2 yrs as a gallery assistant. I admire the loans box service very much. A great deal of love and effort are going into the updating of the boxes which are very user friendly, at the same time keeping the objects safe. The enclosed laminated information sheets are attractive, can be displayed upright and contain very useful, interesting information. The response to the Memory Boxes has been excellent. They are now distributed to care homes etc. by the mobile library service. As well as being recreational they are also therapeutic. One lady suffering from dementia who hadn't spoken for a very long time suddenly began to speak in response to an artefact she was shown. This loans service has continually been available since 1911. It is moving with the times to provide an appropriate service for the 21st century.
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Set in a dramatic Victorian Gothic building on the site of the medieval Reading Abbey, the Museum of Reading’s100,000 visitors come to see some of the 400,000 objects in the Museum’s collections, ranging from ancient Greek pots to a duck-billed platypus. As well as caring for artefacts from all over the world, the Museum now collects objects that have links with Reading and its people.
Some 20,000 objects from the collections of the Museum of Reading and its partner museums have been re-presented in over 1,500 loan boxes. They tell the stories of people and places across the world, taking mini-museums to people in schools, colleges, care homes, libraries, and local community groups across the Thames Valley. 
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