Amgueddfa Cymru has partnered with Ty Hafan Children’s Hospice to engage children and young people with life limiting illnesses and their families with our museums and their collections.

As part of our family learning programme we hold Family Saturdays at National Museum Cardiff and St Fagans National Museum of History. As part of the Family Days, Ty Hafan families can engage in play, sensory activities and experiences, trails and crafts. For many, museum spaces can seem inaccessible and daunting places to visit but our Family Saturdays aim to engage families and show what the museum can offer everyone.

Family Saturdays occur bimonthly and are themed around the museum’s collections, from Impressionist artworks that hang in our galleries and entomology specimens in the Discovery Centre at National Museum Cardiff to bug hunts, birdsong and Iron Age roundhouses at St Fagans. Some examples of recent activity days include ‘Under the Sea’, ‘Autumn Adventure’ and 'Dino Discovery Day’! 

Sensory elements are at the core of all our family days, to make sure that the whole family gets the most out of their visit, to make memories together and to offer them a safe space to chat, meet other families and explore the museum. 

Thank you to all of the Ty Hafan families and staff and their amazing, positive energy.

As we welcome our new lambs at Llwyn yr Eos farm into the world, I’ve been watching the Welsh farmers’ protests and thinking about their future. 

A significant and contentious part of the Welsh Government’s current proposals for the future of agriculture in Wales are measures to promote environmental sustainability and the restoration of biodiversity. This could mean that in the future there might be far fewer sheep kept in Wales. Sustainable sheep farming using environmentally sensitive methods, producing high value products might be the way. How to create added value would be the challenge, though.

One current aspect of sheep farming that has been the cause of frustration for farmers for many years is the low price of wool. The price of a fleece is often not enough to pay the cost of the shearer to shear it. Some farmers have been known to burn or bury their wool rather than pay to have it collected from the wool depot. St Fagans’s wool goes to the British Wool depot in Brecon, whose mission is to drive demand for the product. There is a real need to find additional value from Welsh wool beyond its conventional use for clothing and textiles. This has led to new research into its possible uses in innovative, and sometimes surprising, new products.

We are delighted to launch an upcoming new Lambing Challenge for Schools hosted by Amgueddfa Cymru. The winning school will be able to book up to 2 workshops either in person at one of our sites or virtually, from the advertised list on our museum website.

We believe Lambcam sessions are fun and insightful for students, but also an opportunity to foster their curiosity about the world around them.

We want to know how you are using Lambcam in your schools - show us your best moments in class using our Lambcam sessions with the students!

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

We are delighted to be launching this year’s #lambcam on St David’s Day. This is a special year as we’re also celebrating the 10^th year that we have streamed live from the lambing sheds at St Fagans! Lambcam 2024 is once again brought to you by a small but dedicated team, who will stream the action live from our lambing shed on 1-22 March between 8am-8pm (GMT).

The Lambcam team is joined by two Amgueddfa Cymru Producers, Howl and Varsha, who will both take turns controlling the camera. They are also busy creating behind-the-scenes footage for Lambcam Extra that will be shared on Amgueddfa Cymru’s social media pages:

Facebook | St Fagans National Museum of History 
Facebook | Amgueddfa Cymru[FR1] [ED2]  
Instagram | Amgueddfa Cymru 
X | Amgueddfa Cymru Learning Department

We're expecting 492 lambs in total with a lambing rate of 190% – it’s promising to be a bumper year! The main headline for us as we start our lambing season is the number of multiples we are anticipating from the December scans. On average, we would expect anything up to 10 sets of triplets per year, but 2024 brings a new record for us with a total of 29 sets of triplets due! We are also expecting 1 set of quads, the first in a few years so there is a lot of excitement for their arrival too.

We currently have all the ewes expecting twins in the larger lambing shed, marked with 1 green dot on their backs. The singles, triplets and quad are in the smaller shed across the yard at the moment but they will be moved once more lambs are born and more space comes available in the larger lambing shed.

We welcome hundreds of schoolchildren to St Fagans and Llwyn-yr-eos Farm during the lambing season every year, but we also know that Lambcam is enjoyed in classrooms across the country, and we would love to hear from you! This year, we are launching a special challenge for schools watching online – more details about this will be announced next week.

For more information about our sheep at lambing time, check out these blogs from previous years: 

• Welcome to Lambcam 2022 – what does a normal birth look like? | Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales 
• Lambcam 2021 – FAQs | Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales 
• A guide to lamb presentation – aka ‘what’s going on in there?’ | Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales 

 We hope you enjoy watching again this year – and please keep in touch with us by leaving comments on the Lambcam webpage or on socials using #lambcam #sgrinwyna 

Does Lambcam have you bleating with joy? Shear the love and donate today!

With the festive season upon us, it's important to consider the privilege it is to be able to celebrate in a time of major conflict and global issues and what part we can play that offers positive steps forward in supporting those most affected across the world.

Because of my background in character design and puppetry, I'm often interested in working on a human scale, perhaps by creating characters or puppets. That's why I thought of designing a workshop where participants create flat figures representing individuals making pledges. The idea was also that these figures could facilitate debates or conversations, symbolising our commitments and exploring scales and proportions. Initially, I even wanted to provide time and space within the workshop for participants to use their characters to discuss their pledges. Inspired by puppetry, participants would embody their characters and articulate their ideas, creating a sense of accountability and encouraging action.

When I think or talk about urgent topics like those that inspired the works exhibited at the Arts Mundi exhibition, I'm always mindful that real people are involved in these massive issues. These individuals might not always be engaged in politics, but they are inevitably affected by it.

While we may feel overwhelmed by the urgency and scale of these issues, as people, we can also use our voices and actions to make pledges - that is the thought behind the title of the workshop ‘People’s Pledges’.

When we did the workshop at Cardiff National Museum during February half term, conversations revolved around being kind to each other, protecting our environment, people protesting on the streets, the right to protest, being open to learning about other cultures, being kind to people in our support circle, anti-consumerism behaviours, and the climate crisis…

Originally designed for adults and intended for the LATES event at the museum, we were unsure about how children and families would respond… It was mostly successful, with some parents engaging in conversations with their children as they designed their characters. However, some parents opted not to participate, thinking that the workshop as mostly for children but the workshop was originally planned with adults in mind. This workshop is open to all ages and everyone is welcome to participate!

We hope to facilitate the workshop again, possibly in an outreach setting, as it creates a great opportunity to discuss how we can effect change and take action in our daily lives. Perhaps we could build a whole community of small characters making pledges marching towards action?!