Getting out there

Leicester Museums & Galleries participate in city-wide community events such as the Mela, St. George’s Festival and the Riverside Festival. We have a stall at these events where we talk to members of the public to let them know what is going on in our museums and to promote our coming exhibitions. Sometimes we have objects to handle or displays to look at, and activities for children and families to take part in.

Leicester Museums & Galleries hold pop-up museums with family activities at Highcross Shopping Centre during half term holidays. As they are shopping, people are surprised to find a mini-museum in a previously empty retail unit in amongst the shops! An interesting window display draws them into the space where they find museum objects on display, activities and crafts for families and museum staff to talk about all the exciting things that our museums have to offer.

Check our What's On calendar to see if there is a pop-up museum happening soon.

Leicester Mela

Leicester Museums & Galleries have a marquee in the Arts section of the yearly Mela, held every August in the city centre. The Mela is a huge event celebrating South Asian arts and culture, attracting local families of all backgrounds as well as Leicester’s Asian communities and many visitors from outside the city. With performance, music, food, shopping and arts it is a noisy vibrant celebration of all things Asian.

The museum stall promotes our coming exhibitions, especially those with an Asian theme. Over the years these have been Splendours of the Subcontinent, India’s Gateway, and other exhibitions such as the Ancient Egyptian exhibition and Ladybird Books which included a reinterpretation of a traditional illustration by an Indian folk artist. Promotional material, object displays and high quality art activities for children and adults draw participants into the marquee to discover what is going on and coming soon in the museums.

Highcross Shopping Centre pop-up museum

The Highcross pop-up museums held at half terms are an ideal way to draw in people who may never have been to a museum to discover what our wonderful free museums have to offer. In October 2019 we chose themes including the Open People’s Art Exhibition, Abbey Pumping Station technology, dressing up, a giant selfie-picture frame and African masks. Free family activities were available for all of these, and we also used this opportunity for museum staff to to ask members of the public for their opinions and ideas about our museums.