Magical Lights in The MERL garden
Each year, we end December with a Magical Lights event. Read about our postponed 2021 Magical Lights, reimagined for the Lunar New Year.
51 Voices: The story continues…
Read about the next steps for The MERL’s 70th-anniversary celebrations, 51 Voices, as they continues into our 71st year.
Wild Being: our Mentored Volunteering Programme
Find out how mentored volunteering at The MERL and Reading Museum helps more people access the benefits of volunteering.
Discover Friday Fledglings at The MERL
Hear from Charlotte Allchin, who plans and delivers Friday Fledglings: our weekly outdoor learning sessions for under 5s.
Hidden Stories
The MERL – so much more than simply galleries for people to visit…. The MERL prides itself in being part of the local Reading community beyond the walls of the museum. Recently we have had the opportunity to partner with Age UK Berkshire to take our collections to a whole new audience and we jumped […]
Naming places: how children make the world their own
Written by Dr Jeremy Burchardt, Department of History, University of Reading Place-name (toponym) research has a long and distinguished tradition in English historical scholarship, associated with the work of luminaries such as Margaret Gelling, Harry Thorpe and the English Place Name Society. Admittedly, there is an even longer tradition of bogus place-name derivations–just the other […]
Discovering The Lost Museum
At The MERL, we are delighted to work on creative projects and displays in collaboration with a number of community partners from Reading and further afield. If you visit the Museum at the moment, you will find one such display in The Nook: a community case entitled The Lost Museum, created by the community of […]
Playtime during the pandemic
In this post, our curator, Dr Ollie Douglas, explores his own rural upbringing and introduces new research by colleagues at the University of Reading interested in childhood, outdoor access, the countryside, and the current pandemic. He invites us to contribute towards a survey linked to how children have responded to coronavirus by incorporating health-related narratives […]
My Country Arts Award
Over the last six weeks we have had the pleasure of welcoming Rebecca to The MERL on Supported Work Placement. Rebecca is a student in Reading College’s LLD/D (Learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities department) and she has spent her time with us learning about the museum, being inspired by our collections and has worked […]
10 Reasons You Should Adopt an Archive Box
UPDATE: We never imagined what an amazing response we’d get to our appeal, so thank you to everyone who has already donated! We reached our initial target within just a couple of weeks! This means we can rehouse the damaged negatives as we urgently need to. We’re keeping the campaign open though, as every further […]