Winners of Clore Award for Museum Learning announced

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The Clore Award for Museum Learning presents £10,000 each to Leicestershire County Council Heritage and Arts Service and Whitworth Art Gallery

In an outstanding year for new museum learning initiatives, two new programmes have each been awarded £10,000 in recognition of their innovative and effective approaches to working with young audiences.

Leicestershire County Council Heritage and Arts Service has been jointly awarded the Clore Award for Museum Learning for its Held in the Hands scheme, which centred on a series of sculptural art commissions for children with special educational needs.

Whitworth Art Gallery (University of Manchester) was also jointly awarded the prize for the Manchester Early Years Partnership (MYEP), which brought together museums and galleries across Manchester to devise imaginative and playful ways to engage very young children, practitioners and parents.

Supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation, the second annual Clore Award for Museum Learning 2012 was presented tonight at the British Museum by Dame Vivien Duffield, chair of the Clore Duffield Foundation. Run in parallel for the Art Fund Prize for museums, the annual £100,000 prize for ‘museum of the year’, the Clore Award recognizes achievements in learning programmes which develop the skills, knowledge, values and enjoyment of the participants.

The Clore Award has been chosen by an expert judging panel, co-chaired by Dame Vivien Duffield DBE, Chair of the Clore Duffield Foundation and Sally Bacon, Executive Director. They were joined by Sharon Heal, Editor of Museums Journal, Gerard Kelly, Editor of The Times Education Supplement, and Professor Mick Waters, Professor of Education at the University of Wolverhampton.

For Leicestershire Council’s scheme, artists from all over the UK have been commissioned to create Held in the Hand boxes, a series of sculptural pieces designed to engage and stimulate young minds. ‘Some of my quietest children were so inspired they could talk about them all day’ said one participant. ‘The box definitely made a difference in the classroom as we don’t have any other resource like this’ said another.