I'm going to see the Art of the Brick #exhibition today!
I'm a bit of a #Lego fan, but it always reminds me of one of the years we (at Bletchley Park) won "Best Venue for #Mathematics #Learning" at the School Travel Awards. To my knowledge we won it every year it existed, and it disappeared as a category after three goes. Each time we won I looked up the runners-up to see what the competition were doing (in the spirit of "steal, steal, steal; but steal from the best"), but each time I never really discovered anything that I'd consider genuinely mathematical (so no wonder the category disappeared).
One year, Legoland Windsor were a runner-up and, as far as I could tell their 'mathematics' offer was using bricks as a disappointingly abstract prompt to practise memorisation of times tables.
We can do better than this in the #heritage sector - some already do - but we need to make engaging with mathematics a _normal_, everyday thing that #museums, #galleries, #archives and #libraries do, and not just through their formal learning programmes.
The maths provision in the formal learning programme at Bletchley Park was excellent, but there's no way we should have been such a standout winner in that category every time it ran.
I'm always excited to hear about maths being explored by museums, whether it's part of school trips or (and this is the dream) in its exhibitions.
Some relevant links:
- Art of the Brick: https://theartofthebrickexpo.com/london/
- School Travel Awards: https://www.schooltravelorganiser.com/school-travel-awards
