5th November saw the Our Museum Project Partners arrive at St Fagans to experience a day in the life of a volunteer at the museum. Luck was on our side, the weather was with us and we were all ready for a fantastic day.

The St Fagans Our Museum project has been going from strength to strength. The Initiative is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and aims at bringing museums and communities together. The St Fagans project hopes to do this by building a community of volunteers at the museum.

Over the past year the museum has been working with a dedicated group of Community Partners who are supporting us on the project. They have been involved in decision making every step of the way and are now fully embedded into the Our Museum initiative and the project at St Fagans.

To give the Community Partners a better sense of what it is like to volunteer at the museum, we felt that a day spent on site, carrying out different activities alongside staff would work well. So, we set about preparing an action packed day!

Everyone was extremely keen and it was felt that this would be a great way of getting to know each other in an informal setting.

So, the morning of 5th November saw us all trekking up to the Castel Garden’s where we spent a busy morning digging up the old rose bed in preparation for re planting with Peter and Gareth from the Gardening Team. The sun was shining and we all had a fantastic time. Everyone entered into the competitive spirit as we were split into two groups to dig the patch, the aim being to meet in the middle.

After a fascinating talk from Owain Rhys on the recent Refugee House project we enjoyed a delicious lunch before venturing out on site again with Ian Daniel, Steve Burrow and Janet Wilding. Up to the Celtic Village for an afternoon of clay making, daubing and copper beating.

We all really enjoyed the activities and got thoroughly muddy in the process. Through discussions with staff the Community Partners were able to see how the Our Museum Project will fit into the exciting re development of St Fagans.

Thank you to everyone involved for making the day such a great success! Hats off to the volunteers!

Last chance to have a go at the Animal and Plants Games Trail

The Animal and Plants Games Trail is in its last remaining weeks at National Museum Cardiff. Look for the Cheetah coin symbol in our Lower and Upper Natural History galleries, Evolution of Wales, Natural World and Origins galleries to follow it.

You can also follow the trail by picking up one of the colourful Animal and Plant Games leaflets. They can be found on a stand near the entrance to the Evolution of Wales gallery, near the top of the stairs to the restaurant. Alternatively, you can ask in the Clore Discovery Centre.

But hurry, the trail will be taken down in the New Year and the leaflets are running out fast!

Animals and plants have to compete every day to survive. Strength, size, speed and agility can all help give them an advantage over competitors. Along the trail you can discover specimens of record breaking plants and animals such as: the famously fast Cheetah, the small but strong Dung Beetle, deadly Rosary Peas and record breaking cones from the Big Cone Pine!

A species of fly new to Britain has been found from the Wye Valley by scientist Adrian Plant, working at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales. Platypalpus nigricoxa is thought to be a boreo-alpine relict (left behind when ice retreated at the end of the last glacial period). Apart from the Wye valley, it is only known from the extreme north of Scandinavia, the Kola peninsula in northern Russia and some mountains in eastern Europe.