British Museum Expands Virtual Visits

Demand for schools to visit the British Museum 'virtually' has surged as the new academic year has begun. With school trips off the timetable for nearly all pupils because of the coronavirus pandemic, the British Museum has decided to massively expand the capacity of its Samsung Virtual Visits programme, to ensure school children can still experience the Museum and its collection while unable to travel, and to meet the demand seen just weeks into the new school year.

Capacity for this innovative learning programme - which was formally launched in 2019 - had already been expanded by 150% for the current half term as demand was expected to be higher than usual due to the pandemic. But as all additional sessions were booked up within 3 weeks, the Museum has increased this further: for November and December, 33 school classes a week can now visit the museum virtually. Capacity pre-pandemic was for just 6. This means the number of school pupils who can take part in Virtual Visits goes from an average of 163 a week before coronavirus, to nearly 900 a week until at least the end of the year. The expanded number of sessions for the rest of this term can be booked by schools from today. Virtual Visits for 2021 are also available.

Virtual Visits are part of the Museum's Samsung Digital Discovery Centre (SDDC), which in normal times provides the largest programme of digital learning activities for schools and families in any UK museum for free. They are interactive workshops delivered through a video conferencing platform into a school classroom and presented by a Museum member of staff from the SDDC. Each class has the session tailored to their needs and pupils can enjoy direct interaction with staff, through live activities, interactive quizzes and thought-provoking questions. Schools from across all corners and nations of the UK can have a British Museum experience at no cost, increasing access and sharing knowledge through Samsung's state of the art technology.

Sessions are offered for Key Stage 2 pupils - those aged 7 to 11 - on subjects which directly relate to the history and science strands of the national curriculums. Sessions include explorations of the Indus Valley and Roman Britain, and on pre-history Britain, where students use archaeological objects from the distant past to explore the homes of prehistoric people and compare them to their own homes. For the 2020/21 academic year, a new session on ancient Egypt has been developed. Called Myth-busting ancient Egypt, students become British Museum Myth-busters and develop their own perspective and judgements about ancient Egypt's common misconceptions.

Just as lockdown began, the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre had welcomed a record number of visitors for the year. 28,500 children and young people took part in a wide variety of digital activities from April 2019 to March 2020 - the highest annual number since the Centre opened at the British Museum in 2009. It was a 14% increase on the previous year. Due to social distancing measures, all on-site activities at the Centre have been halted until at least January 2021.

Sarah Saunders, Head of Learning and National Programmes at the British Museum, said: "We're seeing huge demand for our innovative Virtual Visits programme. We know what the Museum is hugely popular with schools, so we're doing as much as we can to ensure pupils can still experience the wonder that is the British Museum collection during this unprecedented time. If schools can't come and visit us, then we'll beam ourselves directly into their classrooms from our Samsung Digital Discovery Centre, wherever they are, for free.

Jessie Soohyun Park, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Samsung UK, said: "We believe in using technology to help defy barriers and, as the pandemic continues to change the way schools operate, we remain committed and passionate about opening up access to exciting and engaging learning opportunities for young people across the country."

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