We have a range of exhibitions, drop-in activities and exciting events that take place in the museum and gardens.
Events and Activities
We have a range of events and activities throughout the year, both inside the Museum and out in the Walled Gardens, see below for details…
Blue Plaque Competition
Create your own blue plaque to celebrate an individual that lives or works in Harlow. Choose someone who has made a difference to you or the community. It could be someone from history, school, or your family
The competition will run from 9th March until 18th April. For ages 4 – 14.
The judging will be completed on 20th April. The judges will be a member of museum staff, member of Harlow Civic Society and a member of Harlow Youth Council.
The awards ceremony will be on 4th May, where you will be able to see the plaque entries displayed. The winner will receive a blue plaque, featuring their own design, to take home.
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Easter Trail – 30th March until 13th April
Harlow Museum & Walled Gardens Annual Easter Trail is back in two weeks time. Join in the fun and find fossils around the garden, then claim your prize.
9:30am to 3pm, £1 per child to enter.
Medieval Cord Making – Tuesday 9th April
10am – 12pm
Use a medieval technique to make a cord friendship bracelet or shoelace.
Book via link below (link live and bookable from 18th March) for ages 6+
Illuminate your Initial – Thursday 11th April
10am – 12pm and 1 – 3pm
Paint a letter in a medieval style, you can include gothic designs and even monsters…
Free, drop in for ages 4+
Exhibitions
We have a temporary exhibition space that is regularly changing with items uncovered from our stores, we also have seasonal displays, work made at our events, or show large collections donated to us.
Games..Games..Games!
Discover our new display, which showcases a range of games uncovered from our stores, including Snakes & Ladders, Spy Trap, Penalty! and Kan-U-Go. It also features, The Harlow Game, a board game created by the Harlow Development Corporation in 1980. As players moved through the game they could follow the development of the new town, from 1947 to 1979. The red squares gave insight to interesting events that happened, including the opening of the Odeon cinema in 1960. But blue squares sent the player back spaces, for reasons including rises in unemployment or even trees being vandalised. The first player to reach the end was the winner. Do you remember playing The Harlow Game with your friends or family?
Coming Soon… Harlow Cricket through 25 decades
Saturday 27th April – Saturday 31st August
There will be an exhibition at Harlow Museum to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Harlow Cricket Club. It will showcase the history of the oldest organisation in the town, with photographs, artefacts and archives from Harlow Cricket Club. The exhibition will run alongside events held at the Cricket Club.
Technology and Communication In Harlow
Our exhibition features technology and communication over the years. Highlighting how the various devises, like TVs, cameras and radios, have all lead to the smartphone which many of us now carry around in our pocket. Did you know that Charles Kao and George Hockham discovered that data could be transmitted along glass fibres at STL in Harlow? This provided the groundwork for fibre optic telecommunications, which forms the backbone of the modern internet.
Museum at Home
If you’ve enjoyed your visit to the museum why not download one of our free printable activity sheets you can do at home.
Make Your Own Pin Hole Camera
In the 16th century, some artists used a ‘camera obscura’ (Italian, meaning ‘dark room’) with a small opening, and later a lens which would project an image of the brightly lit outside scene into the camera. A pinhole camera uses this same principle on a much smaller scale, ask for a work sheet if you are interested in making one at home.
Download here
Binary Code Challenge
Decode a message written in Binary code, and even write your own coded message. Binary code is how computers use and transfer data. Invented in 1689 by Gottfried Leibniz, it is still essential to programming today.
Download here
Make Your Own Telephone
Make a simple telephone and communicate using vocal vibrations.
Download here
Be a Digital Camera
Did you know that digital photographs are made up of coloured pixels, and the colours that they are are coded in binary? Use binary code to colour the pixels in the image, what do you see when you have finished? could you make your own pixel image?
Download here
Make a Movie
Enjoy watching your own moving image by making a zoetrope, experiment with your own image ideas.
Download here