The Grange School Miniature Museum
The Grange School & Sports College Miniature Museum
In 2016 we worked with The Grange School and Sports College, in Warmley, East Bristol, collaborating with the staff, pupils and ex-pupils to create a Miniature Museum as a memorial for the school, as it faced closure that summer.
The Grange School cabinet is on display at Kingswood Heritage Museum to which it now belongs.
The Grange Miniature Museum is set in a double stack of 6 plan drawers, and evokes memories and associations with sounds, film footage, objects and images from the school and its archives. The museum was created as a collective project, with impressions from the experiences and imaginations of people who have passed through the school. It has been made thanks to a few dedicated staff and involvement of the remaining two classes, year 9 and year 11.
Compartments within the drawers have been made to echo the 1960’s architecture. Signs salvaged from classroom doors have become buttons to press within the windows of the school frontage, and trigger lights within the classrooms, snippets of film of school productions or recordings of pupils and staff – from stories of a rampaging giant orange chicken and tasty chips to the days of platform shoes and caning. Most poignant is a time-lapse demolition of one of the school buildings, overlaid with reactions by some of year 11 pupils.
In the making of this cabinet, the process was as important as the outcome. It is made very much for the benefit of those with a close relationship to the school, and will speak to them most. Meanwhile it also aims to touch a wider audience, through common issues, the experiences of being at school, and nostalgia of school days, peers and place.
Miniature Museum is an associate and partner of