Weekly What's On: May 27th to June 1st

You can find full details of all our forthcoming events and activities in our What’s On and MERL Families guides, which are now available from the Museum or to download from our website You can also see all events on our online calendar

Guided tour
Wednesdays, Saturdays & Sundays, 3-3.45pm
Free, booking advisable
Let our fully trained tour guides tell you the stories behind the objects on display and visit the object store to see MERL’s hidden treasures.
Please note the tours this Saturday will be Family tours as part of the MERL Village Fete (see below)

Half term family fun!
Food trail
From Saturday 24th May
£2 per child, drop in
In the run-up to our food-themed Village Fete (May 31st) explore the Museum on our special food trail.

For details of family tours and craft workshops at half term, visit our Family Events page

Palmer’s Painted Glass
Tuesday 27th May (pm session fully booked)

Bee Pots
Wednesday 28th May, 10am -12.30pm & 1.30-4pm
£2 per child, drop-in
Learn how to plant a bee-friendly garden and plant your very own pot to take away.

Family tours
Thursday 29th May
11am & 2.30pm
Join members of our team of family tour guides for a fun, interactive 30 minute tour of the museu and hear stories about what it was once like to live and work in the countryside.

Rural Reads
Thursday 29th May, 5.30-7pm
Come along and join in the informal discussion about this month’s book, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
For details, visit the Rural Reads web page

MERL Village Fete
Saturday 31st May, 10am to 4.30pm
£2.50 in advance or £3 on the door, children free
Our annual fete is on the theme of food this year. Join us for a fun, family day out with delicious food and traditional entertainment!
Don’t forget to bring your homemade biscuits for our new Biscuit Bake-off competition!
For details, visit www.reading.ac.uk/merl/villagefete

Exhibitions

Reading University College: WW1 and beyond
Tuesday 1st April to 31 August, 2014
Staircase hall, MERL
Free, drop-in, normal museum opening times
Funded by Arts Council England as part of the Reading Connections project, and inspired by the University of Reading Memorial Book and Clock Tower memorial, this exhibition reveals the stories of the men and women with connections to the then Reading University College, who fell during the First World War. The exhibition also looks at the theme of War in a broader sense with interesting items from MERL and the SPecial Collections relating to other conflicts.
Part of our WW1 programme

Collecting the countryside: 20th century rural cultures
Until Autumn 2014
Temporary exhibition space
Free, drop in, normal museum opening times
Since 2008 the Museum of English Rural Life has been adding even more objects to its collection, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme, in order to represent each decade of the last century. (Find out more in Curator, Isabel Hughes’ recent post) This exhibition gives a taste of what has been acquired and challenges visitors to suggest the modern-day objects that the Museum needs to collect for the future. The exhibition will help the Museum to explore how to incorporate more recent histories and representations of the English countryside into its displays as part of the new Our Country Lives project.