Community Events

Members of local community groups and Colindale Consortium members were invited to attend the Museum's Community & Press Day where they enjoyed previews of our new London site prior to its Royal Opening on 29 June when members of the community who assisted the Museum with the Historic Hendon Project met HRH the Earl of Wessex.  

The stories take us from the grassed airfield of the London Aerodrome, through the years of RAF Hendon, to the current day Grahame Park housing estate and the RAF Museum.  These were published on 31 May, with a Reception held at the Museum later that evening to thank the students and their Tutors for all their hard work. 

 

 

Rithmik Course

29 - 31 May 2018

The Rithmik Course ran during May Half Term giving local young people skills in radio production, research and presenting. The output included interviews with staff, visitors and archival research. 

 

 

 

ESOL Conversation Café

5 and 14 May 2018

The RAF Museum London is a community hub and we invite English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners to our Conversational Café. The main purpose of our Café is to give them a chance to practise their English while discussing and sharing their stories, thoughts and memories together. ESOL learners can came together in a relaxed, informal environment in the RAF Museum’s café, to practise their spoken English skills. The sessions used themes and resources developed by Barnet and Southgate College, and RAFM volunteers worked with participants to support their learning, encouraging discussions in small groups. The Conversation Café is run in conjunction with partners at Barnet and Southgate College, Timebank Barnet and Barnet Homes.

SoundSkool Music and Performance Course

9 - 14 April 2018

In the first week of the Easter holidays, SoundSkool and the RAF Museum will be running a free music and performance course for young people in Colindale and Barnet. Participants will take part in writing and recording music that tells stories of local history, and will perform a showcase at the RAF Museum for visitors. Sign up is essential, only ten places left. Email info@soundskool.co.uk for signup and info.

Creative Upcycling

17 February 2018

The RAF Museum, Groundworks and the Loop present a one-day upcyling workshop at the RAF Museum, aimed at encouraging new residents in Colindale explore the local area and the museum, and meet their neighbours.

Stop and Laugh: Animation and Stand-Up Course

12 - 16 February 2018

In the the February half-term holidays, Head Held High and Rainbow Head are partnering with the RAF Museum to run a free music and performance course for young people in Colindale and Barnet. Participants will take part in making stop-motion animation or stand up comedy pieces that tell stories about themselves and role models from history. At the end of the week participants will perform a showcase at the RAF Museum. Sign up is essential, only ten places left. Email stopandlaugh@rainbowheadyouth.co.uk for signup and info. 

Silver Sunday

5 October 2017

In the first week of October, Barnet Council runs a Silver Sunday week as part of the National Silver Sunday celebration, with organisations all across Barnet joining in. The RAF Museum put on a special talk at the RAF Museum on Thursday 5 October, held underneath our magnificent Lancaster Bomber. The free talk was one of our community talks from the 'Discover to Share' project, on the subject of Historic Hendon. It was written and delivered by RAF Museum volunteer Tim Bracey, looking at local history related to aviation.

ARTiculate: Hidden Voices

4-7 April 2017

Like many museums, young people make up disproportionately small part of the RAF Museums’s visitors, currently only around 5%, so working with partners such as ARTiculate and seeing young local people connecting with the Museum’s collections and stories has been really rewarding.

The RAF Museum is in the middle of a large redevelopment project to mark 100 years of the Royal Air Force and we will see 3 new exhibitions open in 2018. The exhibitions will focus on ‘people’ and their experiences, and aims to prompt debate around difficult subjects.

This year’s ARTiculate project ‘Hidden Voices’ did just that. It was focused on, as the name suggests, two of the RAFs more hidden or difficult stories -, women and mental health. Over the week of the project the young people researched areas that interested them and created some beautiful and thought provoking artwork. Hopefully some of the ideas they explored will make into the new exhibitions.

A real highlight of the project was seeing the young people working together, regardless of their background, considering hard-hitting issues and dilemmas that affected people at Hendon before them. Poignantly, one project involved designing parachutes for the Flying Nightgales. A group of women who flew from RAF Hendon during World War II as nurses tending to wounded airmen, . they were not allowed to fly with parachutes. The young people thought about words that summed these women up – brave, supportive, proud, excited – and used these words to create a parachute collage to help the women.

Projects such as ARTiculate are vital so that young people have access to high quality creative activities, and it is a fantastic opportunity for the RAF Museum to be able to work with and support the young people on the programme, and explore local history with them.

Silver Sunday

Sunday 2nd October - Monday 3rd October 2016

In the first week of October, Barnet Council ran a Silver Sunday week as part of the National Silver Sunday celebration, with organisations all across Barnet joining in. The RAF Museum put on a special series of talks on Monday 3rd October aimed at older groups, with one on Asian RAF Pilots, and one on Historic Hendon. The event was great fun and enabled older Barnet residents to share their memories of RAF Hendon.

 

Burnt Oak Multicultural Festival

Altogether Better Burnt Oak held their annual parade and festival at Silkstream Park on Saturday 17 September. The RAF Museum attended to support the event with a craft table making foam planes, and handling collection items, giving residents and members of the public the opportunity to try on uniforms and hold historic objects.

 

 

Grahame Park Open Air Cinema

We co-organised a new event on the Grahame Park Estate on the evening of the 8 September, an open air screening of The Goonies for local residents. The RAF Museum will be supported the event with our community volunteers, and showed original films from the 1920's of the London-Manchester Air Race and the 1929 RAF Hendon Pageant.

West Hendon Community Fun Day

Barratts London, in conjunction with Metropolitan Homes, held their annual Fun Day for residents of the West Hendon and Stonegrove estates on the 3rd September from 12noon to 3pm. The Museum attended with a craft table and handling collection, giving residents and members of the public the opportunity to try on uniforms as worn by Second World War RAF Pilots. 

 

Urban Gamez 2016

We attended the Grahame Park estate's for the annual Urban Gamez. On the day there was a 60m race track, football, climbing wall, face painting, arts and crafts, music and refreshments and a great atmosphere! We brought photos from the museum collection showing RAF crew playing sport during WWI, showing what RAF staff did on their downtime. 

 

Pulse Community Fun Day 2016

On Friday 22nd July we attended at the Pulse Community Fun Day at the Pulse Flats by Colindale station. We had good regular footfall to the RAFM marquee through the afternoon, talking to local residents about the museum collection, volunteering and Names on a Plane.

   

  

Grahame Park Fun Day 2016

We attended the Grahame Park Fun Day on Saturday 9th July, with six stands including object handling, volunteering, crafts, vehicles, prize giving and Names on a Plane. We had the support of a great team of volunteers, including cadets from 120 ATC, who also brought a table to talk about the opportunities for joining the ATC. A thank you to everyone who helped out with organisation of the event. Taking part in the Fun Day helps give us a bigger presence in Colindale, and gives us a great opportunity to show off our collection and history to residents of the area as well as the variety of opportunities we can offer local people – the day went really well and we had good footfall at all of the stands.