Kim Streets, Chief Executive on a Summer of the Senses at Sheffield Museums

We’ve welcomed thousands of children, parents, grandparents and carers who’ve had fun, shared ideas and been busy exploring, creating and learning together, inspired by our free family activities.

It’s utterly inspiring to see Sheffield’s families making memories in these beautiful spaces.

Highlights include the Summer Tots sessions for under 5s at Weston Park Museum and Kelham Island Museum - lots of sensory messy action art!

At the Millennium Gallery, we went monotone with our Colour challenge, where visitors of all ages made striking artworks using a single colour. 

People of all ages have been getting creative at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, designing clay tiles and tote bags inspired by the history and nature of this incredible site.

There’s also been plenty of opportunities for reflection and time to gather a sense of the world, not least at the newly redisplayed Graves Gallery, with new portrait and landscape displays, and two sublime exhibitions celebrating work by Kedisha Koakley and Penny McCarthy. 

When children of any age experience museums, they are refining their senses and their ability to make sense of a world that grows more complex and challenging with each generation. 

Our future will be built by people with the skills and confidence to ask questions, to be critical and to feel the world in all its beauty, and all its difficulties.

We need that spark of creativity, that desire for curiosity and the drive for experience to sustain us through a lifetime.

Sheffield’s Museums belong to the people of this city, almost every object has been gifted by people who live and have lived here, who have a connection and who love this place.

Your support today will help Sheffield Museums continue to develop creative programmes with and for the people of Sheffield and our many visitors for generation to come.