Details
Age group: Year 3 - 6
Available: Monday – Friday
Length: 90 minutes. Please allow more time after your workshop to explore the galleries and public spaces
Group size: minimum 10
Subjects and Key Skills
Information literacy, critical thinking, research, enquiry
Workshop outline
Take a creative journey through the British Library, including the galleries and public spaces, asking questions about libraries, collections and knowledge.
Using discussion and playful activities, this workshop invites participants to ask challenging questions about the role of the Library. The workshop asks visitors to look at the British Library as a collection of ideas from different times and places.
During your workshop you might:
- Use the objects in the British Library's collections to examine how we carry out research
- Explore the development of the written word
- Examine how knowledge is stored and used
- Look at the building itself to consider how ideas are communicated
After the workshop, you'll see the British Library in a completely different way!
Following your workshop, we recommend spending time exploring the galleries and public spaces in more depth.
Pre-visit activities
Spend some time in your school/local library and talk about the purpose of a library:
What are they for? Who uses them? How do we find things?
Post-visit activities
Book our free performance A Place for Everything? for your school or organisation. The piece is humorous, thought-provoking and based on a dialogue between a librarian and a blank piece of paper. It prompts debate about how we organise, catalogue and categorise knowledge.
