REVIEW: Free day for families in Bristol – Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is either a lifesaver or will make you want to cry as you have done it over and over and over and over again.

Chopsy Baby visited the museum on the first day of the February half term 2011. The day started off well and though the weather was miserable it did not deter.

Reporter Deborah, started in Southville and walked the few miles with a baby in a pram and a four-year-old hanging from a buggy board. “As a family we were off in search of that elusive cheap day out. This meant that the bus was out of the equation,” she says.

Editor Jen, left from Brislington and caught the bus with a double tandem Phil and Teds, including a baby and four-year. “Stressful. Taking the bus is hard work. I would rather walk but don’t like the standard of driving displayed on the Bath Road,” Jen says. “It’s also £4 to start with. Not quite free but still cheapish.”

The museum is located at the top of Park Street, guaranteed to raise your heart beat. Our pulse was also raised by the amount of stress caused by containing two excited reception aged children from sliding on their stomachs across the museum floor.

The museum has a lift to access the main building. This has sometimes been found to be out of order but there is disabled access to the side. This access has to be requested at the main desk.

There is an allocated buggy park on the ground floor.  Prams are left at your own risk and heads up if you are the first person to use these. You will have to fight your way through 50 prams to get yours out again. “I did feel like when moving all the other prams I was in a human version of Tetris, trying to make the other prams fit in various shapes to get mine out,” Deborah recalls. If you lined up all the prams that were at the museum that day you could reach the moon and back twice.

Due to the retail price of the Phil and Teds, a very expensive coat we didn’t want to lug around and the general inconvenience of theft, we secured the two prams together with a bike lock supplied by ourselves.

There are lockers to put items in, but on this day they were all in use. The North Face coat sleeve had been chained through the middle and was so concertinaed when unlocked, it was like Pierrot the clown had got his retro hands on it.

Clean and well maintained, the museum’s floors are an ideal location to take a child that is learning to walk or to master steps. Staff were visibly seen checking toilet facilities and emptying bins regularly. There was also many more on duty to cater for the anticipated visitor numbers.

Toilets were very busy on the day and we noted the easy access toilet was out of order

From past experience, Chopsy Baby has found the museum tries really hard to have interactive sessions for the children. Recently, there was the excellent Chinese New Year celebrations. As well as a dancing lion, there were hands-on activities including mask making, choirs, Chinese writing and experts taking questions. 

There is usually a touring exhibit and at the moment they have Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The thought of taking 4 children into this exhibit made Deborah want to cry so we opted for Tiny World which is lovely. It is a place purposely set up for children under the age of 7 to let off some steam. It has dressing up, puppets and a pretend theatre with backdrops of famous pictures. This area can get very busy due to its popularity.

Computers out of order

Egypt world, which has been redesigned in recent years is a dark maze of artefacts. Our under-5s were only interested in the computers, of which we have enough of at home. The computer station housing three computers children can sit down to were out of order.

Lift out of order

The geology section that includes dinosaurs, minerals, rocks, fossils and stuffed animals proved the most popular with the children. We had to haul the babies around as the lift was out of action and the prams were too heavy to carry up stairs.

There are many sections that have been designed for children to sit down and do some colouring, activities and work sheets to give the parents a five minute breather.

On final reflection, the museum is a great place to take your children, perhaps not during peak times though. The staff clearly work very hard, sometimes not getting it quite right but are generally well meaning.

There has been a big attempt to make this museum child and family friendly, and this is an achievement by Bristol City Council really worth noting.

Deborah concludes: “Although the review may seem negative, I wanted to give mums the heads up of the possible stress points so your day is a little bit easier. The free museum is well worth a day out.”

 http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Leisure-Culture/Museums-Galleries/bristols-city-museum—art-gallery.en