Projects

Last term, our Museum Council students worked with Rumble director Lorna to create a tube map of the Rumble Museum's collections and displays.

The tube map is an iconic design, loved by many, and its striking simplicity in mapping out the complex underground system made it an ideal way to map out the very varied and spread out nature of the Rumble collections and galleries! The students set to work on planning what the different lines should be, how they should intersect, and what colours they should be. Lines include "classics", "art", "nature", "science" and "future" lines. There is also a "protest" line featuring artefacts connected to protest throughout history such as our Suffragette and Racial Justice collections. A "literature" line explores dystopian fiction and Stranger Things-related objects from the 1980s.

They also invented the idea of a "beeline", which would be a special line that mapped out the "must see objects" in the museum. The beeline stops were chosen by Year Nine students and include an ancient Greek tetradrachm coin featuring Athena and her owl, a Victorian Albion Printing Press recently donated to the museum, our World War Two gas mask and Covid vaccine vials from the first roll-out of the vaccine, amongst many other items.

Other innovations they made to the tube map included making the crossover stops hexagon-shaped rather than round to reflect the hexagon theme of the Rumble Museum, and having large hexagon images on the main tube map as well as smaller signs showing the stand-out artefacts. 

Once they had all their ideas and designs in place, these were handed over to local designer Naomi Waite to turn into the beautiful map that you can see below. The huge (3 metre by 2 metre) map is appearing this week in main reception and also in the outside space, so students and visitors alike can enjoy it. A number of smaller signs will soon be appearing in individual buildings showing which lines run through those buildings and more must-see objects.

The Rumble Museum is planning to produce tickets for particular routes which can get stamped for different events throughout the year.

For the first time, the Rumble Museum Robots which have watched over the Cheney outside space since the pandemic began two years ago have begun to speak!

In the past few weeks, they have been taken away for some repairs to their arms, and secretly, they were also adapted to be able to install speakers. On their return, they waited in silence for a few days before speaking for the very first time to students on Tuesday 15th March at break time to unsuspecting Cheney students.

The Year Eight Museum Council students and Sixth Form Museum Volunteers have been in the know for a number of weeks, and have kept the plans veiled in secrecy. The students were given the challenge of preparing the first words of the robots, and decided to create some ghost stories connected to Cheney's past. They worked in groups to compose some stories, and the robots have been speaking this stories since Tuesday morning at certain times, including an English lesson, where other students were then able to come up with their own new stories.

We are delighted to have received a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a project developing displays and workshops using our African Artefacts Collection.

In December 2020, we were privileged to have received an extensive and fascinating collection of artefacts from a range of countries in Africa. Over the past year we have been working with Natty Mark Samuels, founder of the African School, the Earth Museum, and groups of students and community members of African heritage, to create striking displays and resources around these artefacts.

The collection consists of a mixture of everyday items such as a beautifully decorated African doorframe, an African drum, and an agaseke basket. In each case, Natty has been working with our students and staff to produce an information booklet including traditional poems inspired by the objects, and a series of mini videos about the items which can be used in a range of educational contexts. The videos can be found by clicking on the links below:

In November 2020, Year Eight Museum Council students began a new project to explore and celebrate the trees on site at Cheney School.

Over the last few months, they have been working hard to identify, map and photograph all of Cheney's beautiful trees. They have themed each section, and recruited a range of Cheney staff to be the voices of the trees. As well as many fascinating and informative staff tree voice-overs, there are some celebrity trees hidden in each section - visit the tree trail to see if you can recognise their voices as they tell you about their tree.

Initially, due to Covid, we decided to make a virtual Tree Trail that people could explore over lockdown, and this virtual Tree Trail was launched on 24th March as part of the Rumble Museum's Cheney 2050 event. The event involved building a whole new website, on which we hosted the event itself, and also the Tree Trail. You can explore the Tree Trail on this site and, if you log in, you can collect points and earn a badge for completing the trail.

Explore our virtual Tree Trail below (please click on the image).

We have also been working with silvologist Gabriel Hemery on his exciting Tree Letters project, and one of Cheney's trees hosts a capsule as part of this project.

On Saturday 22nd May we will be having a Tree Trail morning, where members of the public will be able to explore the trees both inside and outside of the main school site. There will be activities and information sheets for children. More details will appear very soon on our 'What's On' page.

 This September, the Rumble Museum has launched a pilot of a new project which will use objects from history to help deliver the Medicine Through Time module from Edexcel’s History GCSE course. The project has been developed by Mr David Gimson (Cheney School, Museum Lead), Mr David Hibbert (The Weald School, Head of History) and Dr Lorna Robinson (Cheney School, Rumble Museum Director).

This project is being trialled in Year Nine classes at Cheney School (where the Rumble Museum is housed) and the Weald School. Thirty objects representing five different time periods have been selected, and lessons and course materials are being developed in order to deliver lessons which use the objects as a way to recreate the time periods and explore the past. Full write-ups of all lessons and resources can be found on a blog for the project here.

Each school involved has access to either original or museum quality replicas of the objects which will be used for viewing and handling as part of the lessons.You can view our collection here.

We are very grateful to the wide range of experts who have created bespoke voice-overs to introduce each object. Professor Matthew Snape from Oxford University Vaccine Group speaks on childhood vaccines, Author and broadcaster Professor Jim Al-Khalili has contributed on Arabic Medicine, Dr Simon Singh speaks about the problems of homeopathic remedies, Roger Highfield, Science Director of the Science Museum Group, and Professor of Public Engagement at the Dunn School speaks about the use of bedpans in the development of antibiotics, Dr Emily Mayhew talks on the importance of World War One advances in medicine and Professor Helen King speaks about Roman medical items. Many other experts have contributed, and all their recordings can be explored on our website pages here

Please contact us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information or if you would like to be involved.

Over the next few weeks, the Rumble Museum is making a series of shows called "Stories through Objects" for Radio Cherwell, the Hospital Radio Service.

Each show will explore a different story, and use objects from our collection and songs to journey through the themes, characters and places in the stories.

The shows are aired every Friday from 1.30 to 2pm, and then repeated on Mondays at 1.30pm. You can listen to these shows on the Radio Cherwell website. We make the voice recordings, playlists details and objects featured available once the live shows have aired. Please see below for the shows.

Episode 1: 17th and 20th April - Homer's Odyssey

Episode 2: 24th and 27th April - Orpheus and the Underworld

Episode 3: 1st and 4th May - Theseus and the Minotaur

Episode 4: 8th and 11th May - Echo and Narcissus

Episode 5: 15th and 18th May - Peleus and Thetis' Wedding

Episode 6: 22nd and 25th May - Daedalus and Icarus

Episode 7: 29th May and 1st June - Prometheus and Zeus

Episode 8: 5th and 8th June - The Creation of the World

Episode 9: 12th and 15th June - Dionysus

Episode 10: 19th and 22nd June: The Founding of Rome