"It's exciting. It's terrible. It's funny. It's scary ... and I want to come with you!"
| It’s exciting. It’s terrible. It’s funny. It’s scary... and I want to come with you! |
That's what nine-year-old Cassy Marshall would say if someone said to her "I'm going to the Hancock Museum".
Cassy was recently part of a Children's Express story team that visited the Museum to find out what's on offer for young people.
Most visitors to Newcastle's 115-year-old Hancock Museum are children; three out of every five to be exact. They also pay for a lot of its exhibitions, since some 60% of the museum's income comes from admission charges.
It's not a large museum, (two minutes to walk round, reckoned one of our story team), but there's a lot in it, mostly hidden away.
It houses some 750,000 natural history specimens - animals, birds, insects, spiders, fossils, rocks and minerals, but only a small fraction of these are on show at any one time because of the amount of space needed to display them.
As well as permanent exhibitions, it also has some that last for just a few weeks. When we visited, it was the end of one called Movie Magic which had aliens, Austin Powers dummies and disco lights, stuff from Titanic and Darth Vader among other things. It seemed a big hit among the kids we saw at the Museum. Some didn't seem interested in anything else.
The aliens were a talking point among us. When they started banging on doors, Scott liked it, but not all of us did. Some parts were definitely scary for children.
At the moment, the museum, a few minutes walk from the city centre, has an exhibition called Claws, all about cats from moggies to lions and tigers. It lasts until January 9. In February there's one called Myths and Monsters about dragons and other beasts.
All the year round there's Egyptian and Greek exhibitions. There are also stuffed animals, which we weren't too keen on. They reminded one of us of statues and another didn't like them because they were literally, dead boring.
On the whole we thought it well worth the visit but one father there with three of his family, told us he thought it expensive "for what it is". There are discounts however for people less able to pay the admission charge.
About the team
This article was published by editor Amy Wood, 16, and reporters Samantha Newby, 12, Emma Allison, 10, Cassy Marshall, 9 and Scott Rainey, 8. It was published on Newcastle Community News online.
