Blog

In March 2025, the Rumble Museum celebrated the history of Cheney School, and especially its legacy of making and crafting of all kinds. One of the schools which went on to form Cheney School was Cheney Technical School, founded by John Henry Brookes, a craftsmen and educator. You can find out more about the history of the school here.

This involved a project with sixth form museum council students digitising a vast array of school reports, photographs, magazines and other materials which have been donated to the Rumble Museum. One of many items donated to us has been this school report from 1960, which alumnus Bernard Stone has been kind enough to let us reproduce. As you can see, there is much that has changed about reports, as well as some things that remain the same! The report gives some idea of the technical, crafts-orientated education which took place at the Technical School.

As well as this project, the museum organised a sixth form conference on Tuesday 11th March which celebrated the technical school’s history and legacy, with a range of all day workshops, where students were able to make something - from mosaics, clay cities, jewellery and globes, to printing, songwriting, short storywriting, and more. We were very excited to see what our Year Twelves all produced!

Museum Students in Year Eleven and Twelve at Cheney School in east Oxford were very excited to be taking part in a collaborative project involving the forthcoming exhibition "This is what you get" at the Ashmolean.

It is the first exhibition in a public gallery to bring together the visual work of Stanley Donwood and Radiohead's Thom Yorke. The Ashmolean state: More than 120 works will be on display, with many of the paintings, drawings and digital art specifically created for Thom Yorke’s internationally acclaimed band Radiohead, formed in Oxford in 1985.

The young people were invited to attend a session where the director of the exhibition presented ideas for the exhibition, and students were able to offer feedback and suggestions to be incorporated into the exhibition. Students were asked, before the visit, to choose a Radiohead album cover or song and prepare a creative response: this could be a poem, piece of artwork, or song. The Ashmolean was particularly keen on these responses being collaborative projects, since the exhibition itself is focused on a collaboration.

Students produced new songs, artwork, poems, voiceovers, and videos - all inspired by the cover art and music of Radiohead. The Ashmolean have created a special exhibition page for the students' work here

We are very grateful to have been able to collaborate with the Ashmolean on this first of its kind exhibition. Rumble Museum students had chosen Radiohead's OK Computer to feature in a permanent new Music Technology Exhibition at the school. 

On Monday 13th January, Cheney School students Amy Bedding (Year Eleven) and Nadia Heer (Year Eight) were invited to present their Holocaust Memorial candle holders project to the King at Buckingham Palace.

In October, students from Rumble Museum Council groups in Years Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven took part in a project designed by Beth Jones from the Museum of Oxford, and funded by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust as part of their 80 Candles for 80 Years project.

The project involved Museum Council students from Cheney hearing the moving story of Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist who survived Auschwitz by joining the Women’s Orchestra. The students discussed how museums can engage with and exhibit difficult histories, and they each then worked on decorating an individual candle-holder, thinking carefully about how their design might reflect the story and themes we had been discussing. While decorating, a piece of music by Karl Jenkins was played.

Nadia and Amy were able to talk about their designs for several minutes to the King, who met them, accompanied by Holocaust survivor, Manfred Goldberg, and asked them questions about their designs and their thoughts.

Amy explained how her candleholder was decorated with musical notes, alluding to Anita’s musicianship, and also broken glass, which symbolised her experience in Auschwitz. There are also human figures that show Anita’s community and orchestra, through which Amy said “she and others were able to join together and share a common human experience and keep hope alive in order to survive”.

Rumble Museum Founder and Director Dr Lorna Robinson and Museum Lead and History Teacher David Gimson accompanied the students to Buckingham Palace.

We were delighted to hold a Festival of Birds at Cheney School on Tuesday 4th February, 3 - 5pm.

The event was the first of a series of events celebrating the nature around us, as we began an extended series of miniature events.

There were a range of bird-themed information and activity stalls, including scientific, artistic, craft and storytelling explorations and celebrations of the birds around us. There were also refreshments available and a live bird display. 

Visitors were able to find out about the birds around us, and how they inspired ancient myths, stories, art and more through the ages. There were a number of local scientists and artists talking about how their work has been inspired by birds.

We also displayed prints of birds from magical realist, bird-themed novel The Birder, set in Oxford, and written by Rumble Museum director Lorna Robinson.

A 1930s wooden train, an original set of scrabble, and a cash register with shillings and pence were some of the items which came through Cheney School's doors at the Rumble Museum's Collection afternoon yesterday.

The Museum of Oxford was there with a range of artefacts to display too, and Ms Gersh,  data manager, brought some of the toys she had designed in an earlier career as a toy designer! We were also delighted to welcome Bernard Stone, an alumnus from the Cheney Technical School in the 1950s who brought an impressive array of objects. Students, staff and parents were able to explore artefacts and share their stories of childhood. BBC Radio Oxford were also there to speak to people about their experiences of childhood.

A community vote on favourite toys was also held, and lego came out as the winner!

All these stories and objects will slowly begin to be turned into a brand new exhibition about the History of Childhood, which will be displayed in converted old lockers.

The exhibition will be curated by our Museum Council students, with support from the Museum of Oxford, and will be launched later in 2025.

We are still very much open for any donations of toys, games and books from childhood - please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

St Giles' Cafe, Gloucester Green, Martyrs' Memorial, Cheney School, Lady Margaret Hall, C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve, and St Mary and St John Church are some of the well-known locations around the city which features in a new novel illustrated by handmade linocut prints featuring birds. 

The new novel The Birder is set in a mysterious Oxford city where people transform instead of dying, and where an ancient poem by Ovid might hold the key to the mystery at the heart of this strange yet familiar universe. 

The book is available to purchase as hardback, paperback and ebook here.