During 2019 we spent time developing the skills programme at St Fagans, working with partners and communities to create opportunities for adult learning and skills development, linked to our work under the Fusion Initiative and the Well-Being of Future Generations Act. To mark the launch of the new section of our Learning website for Community Learning here’s an update on what’s been achieved so far and what’s to come in 2020.

Community Learning and Skills Development:

We have been working with organisations such as the Wallich, Hafal, Crisis and Oasis Cardiff to collaboratively establish craft skills taster sessions with their participants. Workshops including leather and copper work have inspired the participants to use the museum’s collections as inspiration, whilst bringing their own cultural experiences with them to each session. 

People who have taken part have shared their experiences and feedback with us. Here are some of the highlights:

“Immersing, interesting, rewarding”

“It’s something that I’ve never done before so I found leather work really interesting and relaxing.”

So far 243 people have been taken part in sessions from April and December 2019, with further sessions planned in 2020.

Widening Accesses Partnerships:

We have been collaborating with Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Widening Access department to bring accessible learning programmes to the museum, using the museum’s collections to enhance and deepen the learning potential. In 2019 two creative writing courses and one in complimentary therapy were delivered at St Fagans. A second Complimentary Therapy course is currently running and further courses are planned for later this year.

Learner feedback highlights:

“The course has been a good confidence booster and showed me where I would like to progress.”

“Really enjoyed the course, well tutored, supportive environment.”

Language Skills:

Creating opportunities for people to learn and develop their language skills forms an important element of the skills development programme. In 2019 St Fagans built on its partnership with Cardiff University School of Welsh, who delivered a 20 week Entry 1 course (January to July 2019). Many of the learners went on to enrol on the Entry 2 Course which started in September 2019. A blended Entry 1 and 2 course also started in September 2019, with a new Entry 1 course starting this January.   

ESOL Learners are benefitting from the St Fagans ESOL learning resources, developed collaboratively with Cardiff and the Vale College (CAVC), proving opportunities for them to use the museum as a safe space for learning, sharing their culture and developing their knowledge and understanding of Welsh cultural heritage. Groups have been visiting from colleges such as CAVC and the resources are being regularly downloaded from the Museum’s website – in total 174 downloads between May and December 2019.

This year we are celebrating this success and building on it by launching the new Community Learning section of our website. Head over to have a look and learn more about how to take part and book a visit.

Thanks to all the participants, partner organisations and the team at St Fagans for everything that’s been achieved so far.

Hello Bulb Buddies,

I’ve heard that many of you are expecting your plants to flower soon. Well done for looking after your plants so well. I’m looking forward to seeing photos of your flowers so please share these with me.

Why not have a go at drawing botanical illustrations of your plants? There are lots of different examples of drawings like these on the Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales website if you want ideas. I’ve added an example of a botanical drawing from the museum’s collection on the right, does this look like your plant?

Can you name the different parts of your plant? Do you know what the anther and the sepal are? Drawing and labeling your plants is a lovely way to look at them in more detail. Please share your artwork with me if you do this.

Remember to look at the ‘Keeping Flower Records’ resource on the website. This shows how to tell when your plant has fully opened and how to measure your plants height. These records are important for our study, as we will look at the average flowering dates and compare these with previous years.

It will be interesting to see whether our plants flower early this year. The MET Office reported that January 2020 was the 6^th warmest January since 1884, with lower than average frosts for the time of year. Do you think this will have affected our plants growth?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section when you enter your weather data Bulb Buddies.

Keep up the good work!

Professor Plant

The dinosaur skeleton we know and love as Dippy, has an interesting history. But we know these fossils were first called Diplodocus, right? Well, no probably not….

We’ve heard about how ‘Dippy’ came to London in 1905 – a plaster cast of the original fossil bones kept in the Carnegie Museum Pittsburgh. And thanks to palaeontologists, we can picture it as a living animal browsing in Jurassic forests 145-150 million years ago – seeing off predators with its whip-like tail.

But what about the middle of the story? Where did these fossils come from?

In 1898 thanks to the steel industry, Andrew Carnegie was one of the richest people in the world. He was busy giving away money for libraries and museums. Hearing about the discovery of huge dinosaurs in the American West he said something like ‘Get us one of those!’, sending a Carnegie Museum team to find a “most colossal animal”.

So, in 1899 in the last days of the American Old West, a Diplodocus skeleton was discovered at Sheep Creek, Albany County on the plains of Wyoming, USA. It happened to be the 4th of July, Independence Day, which prompted the Carnegie team to give the fossil its first nickname - ‘The Star Spangled Dinosaur’. Predictably though, this new species was later published as Diplodocus carnegii.

The dig site would have looked very similar to this one at the nearby Bone Cabin Quarry one year earlier.

To set the scene, these late 1800's photographs are from other parts of Albany County, Wyoming (via Wikimedia Commons).

Dippy’s first name, “Unkche ghila”.

But what about the original people of the plains, the Native Americans? Wouldn’t they have found dinosaur fossils before the European settlers? In her book “Fossil Legends of the First Americans” Adrienne Mayor shows that indeed they did. They visualised the fossils’ original forms as Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters, and several of the famous dinosaur collectors had Native American guides. This book shows that Native American ideas about fossils were perceptive of the geological processes involved such as extinction, volcanoes, and sea level change.

( “Clear”, Lakota people, 1900. Heyn & Matzen ) 

The original people of the plains where Diplodocus fossils are found are the Lakota Sioux. James LaPointe of the Lakota people was born in 1893, and recalls a legend he heard as a boy:

“The Sioux called these creatures “Unkche ghila”, roughly comparable to dinosaurs; these oddly shaped animals moved across the land in great numbers and then disappeared. The massive bones of these now extinct creatures can be found in the badlands south and east of the Black Hills. It is not clear when the unkche ghila went extinct, but Sioux geology maintains they were still around when the Black Hills rose from the earth.” From James R. Walker , 1983. ‘Lakota Myth’.

So, via Adrienne Mayor, I’ll give the last word here to the US National Park Service:

“The stories and legends told by American Indians offer a unique perspective into the traditional spiritual significance of fossils and offer an exceptional opportunity to illustrate the interconnectedness of humans and nature.” Jason Kenworthy and Vincent Santucci, “A Preliminary Inventory of National Park Service Paleontological Resources in Cultural Resource Contexts.”

We are about to say a fond farewell to Dippy the Dinosaur who will be taking a triumphant bow from National Museum Cardiff on 26 January.

Over the course of the past three months, 188,710 people have had the inspiring experience of witnessing, up close and personal, something truly unique - a diplodocus that walked our earth over 155 million years ago. To witness the look on the tens of thousands of children who set their eyes on Dippy as they entered our great hall, free of charge, has been deeply touching.

Dippy is with us today due to the vision of an extraordinary Scottish-American businessman, Andrew Carnegie, yes he of the New York concert hall fame, and who led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth century. Carnegie was, and still is, through his Foundation, one of the world’s great philanthropists and benefactors, supporting museums, libraries, education, the arts and science across the globe.

In 1902, over dinner at Carnegie’s Skibo Castle, King Edward VII heard about a dinosaur, which was housed in the Carnegie Pittsburgh Museum. The King persuaded Carnegie to donate a cast of the diplodocus to the Natural History Museum in London as a gift, which was mounted there in 1907, the same year as we opened the doors of Amgueddfa Cymru here in Cardiff.

And now today, Dippy, made possible by Carnegie’s extraordinary lifelong commitment to philanthropy, is touring the UK, capturing the hearts and minds of millions of people, creating a sense of wonder and amazement wherever this dinosaur goes.

This is what Amgueddfa Cymru aims to do - inspire people and change lives for the greater good. This is what makes a partnership with our museums so special for private patrons as well as for businesses. We create relationships with people which transcend the mundane. We create experiences that are visceral, meaningful and long lasting and which are truly transformational. All of us can play a part, great or small, in supporting this noble ambition.

I encourage you all to join us in supporting not only the curation of the past, but the present as well, and with the vision of Carnegie, help shape the future. For more information on how we can work together with you please contact our Development team.

Where do I start when talking about the experience that has been Dippy?! 

Well he’s certainly been a phenomenon for us here at Amgueddfa Cymru. Right from when we first started installing him back in October last year, people were standing on the balcony watching the very efficient team from the Natural History Museum putting him together piece by piece. Of course we saved the head going on until last! I was fortunate to be permitted into the enclosure and up close to some of the replicated bones, which was very exciting for me.

In the first half term in October we had 53,898 visitors to the museum, an increase of 258% on the previous year. On the Wednesday we had over 10,000 visitors, which is a first for us! What we had been prepared for by a previous venue, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, but that might not instantly occur to you, is that we needed more toilet rolls! Not a very glamorous aspect of Exhibitions & Displays, but a very important one for our visitors! In my last blog I talked a lot about Snake poo, so I’m moving on swiftly from toilet rolls now before I gain a reputation for obsessing about poo! Our front of house staff had their work cut out for them; ensuring visitors could access the whole museum, answering questions on Dippy and keeping them safe. I spent some time in the Main Hall and these amazing people worked so hard. But it wasn’t just in the Main Hall. The galleries were full, especially our Natural History galleries, which was great as we had additional visitors to the museum to see Dippy, but they stayed to explore more of what we have to offer.

We have a special Dippy shop which has been equally full and busy, with staff rushed off their feet – my favourite item is the glittery dinosaur.  There may have been debate about what dinosaurs looked like, but I’m pretty sure no one has found evidence for sequins as yet! Our colleagues in the restaurant and cafe made special menus to account for the increase in visitor footfall, as well as the opportunity to make dinosaur cakes!

In our Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, which was open to the public during holidays and weekends, our colleagues from the Youth Forum worked with artist Megan Broadmeadow to create a strong message about Fast Fashion from recycled clothes. I’m trying to work out where we can keep the pterosaur, which is brilliant. Our messages about the climate emergency within the exhibition and also when Extinction Rebellion Cardiff came and held a ‘die in’ are, for me, highlights of what a museum can achieve when we work with people from outside our organization and be led by their inspiration and creativity.

I’ve spoken with staff from across the museum and everyone seems to have enjoyed having Dippy here, it’s going to seem very empty when he goes at the end of this month – you have until 26 January to see him.