Meet the Changemakers: Environmental Justice
Drop in between 12pm-4pm to discover new and different ideas and get involved in free activities for all ages.
Manchester Museum’s Top Floor is a space for learning, connecting and inspiring change, and Meet the Changemakers is our quarterly event that gives you the chance to meet the communities, charities, activists and artists shaping a more planet friendly and fair future for Manchester. This autumn we’re highlighting the connections between planet and people and how we can take action together.
Workshops and activities
Museum Meeple: Family Games Corner
12 – 1.30pm on the Top Floor, then continues 2-4pm in the Learning Basement
Have you got a passion for points? A craving for cardboard? Are you bird-brained for board games? Join us for tabletop gaming, with a range of games to get you looking at the Museum’s collections in a new light. Play with one another and other visitors, with support and rules explanations from Museum facilitators. There will be games aimed at families, young people, and adults. Manchester Museum’s lending library has something for everyone aged 6 to 600! Continue in the Learning Basement from 2 – 4pm.
Make Your Own Pangolin Puppet
Drop-in craft activity between 12-3pm and join the Pangolin Parade at 2pm – Top Floor Workshop
Get up close to a pangolin from the museum collections to learn more about these incredible creatures and why they are under threat, before making your own pangolin puppet and joining in with our Pangolin Parade around the Top Floor at 2pm! What’s a Pangolin you say? Click here to view the Pangolins in your Museum’s collection and listen here to a soundtrack made by children at Olympias Music Foundation, entitled ‘If a Pangolin Could Speak’.
Tiger Widow storytelling with Ergon Theatre
1pm and 3pm, Top Floor Classroom
Join Robin from Ergon Theatre for an exclusive listen-in of their new radio drama which explores stories of women from Bangladesh dubbed ‘Tiger Widows’ following the death of their husbands through human-tiger contact. Click here to read more about how the climate crisis is contributing to creating more human-tiger conflict and some of the consequences that follow. This activity is for audiences aged 12+.
London Mining Network and Conflict Minerals Campaign
12-4pm drop-in games and handling objects, Top Floor
Do you know what your phone is made from? Meet members of Conflict Minerals campaign and the London Mining Network and take part in an interactive game to learn about all the special metals and minerals inside your phone and where they come from. Then get the chance to see these minerals up close with Daniel Ryczek, a researcher at the University of Manchester.
Climate Justice Highlights Tour
Tours runs 2:15pm – 3pm. Meet in the Belonging Gallery at 3pm
Join this special highlights tour of the museum’s collections exploring the stories from our galleries which connect people, planet, justice and action!
Silent Skies Exhibition
Research Gallery and Kanaris Lecture Theatre, drop in activities between 12-4pm and short talks between 1-2pm
You wouldn’t drink dirty water, so why do we not care more about the pollution in the air we breathe? This weekend is your last chance to see our community led exhibition about air pollution in Greater Manchester before it closes on Sunday 2 November. In the Kanaris Lecture Theatre there will be stalls, workshops and talks exploring the issue of air pollution and actions you can take to help – with Ardwick Climate Action and other clean air campaign groups including Manchester Climate Alliance, Let’s Talk Clean Air Whalley Range, Trees Not Cars, Ryebank Fields and Mums for Lungs. Look out for students from the University of Manchester roaming around the museum with their creative visualisations helping us understand this invisible problem.
Silent Skies Talks (1-2pm, Kanaris Lecture Theatre)
1pm – Alexandra Barrueta Sacksteder
Dr. Alexandra Barrueta Sacksteder’s digitally interactive and immersive talk looks at the transformative power of trees. Join her to learn how they shape our world and the benefits of wooded friends.
1.15pm – Nick Drew
Nick Drew is a programme manager, systems thinker and counsellor, with many years of experience in the adaptation and emergency response sectors ranging from community scale through to national government. Beyond his role as SAFER Campaign Manager for the Climate Majority Project, Nick is a Board member of the Climate Psychology Alliance. Nick will be speaking about the CMP’s recent SAFER Report with its aim to make climate adaptation mainstream.
1.30 pm – Dan Musaheb, Ardwick Climate Action & Prof. Jen O’Brien, University of Manchester
Dan and Jen share the process behind the Silent Skies exhibition and reflect on how the city of Manchester is fairing in terms of air quality, finding solutions and campaigning.
Stalls and engagements on the Top Floor
- Manchester Friends of the Earth
Manchester Friends of the Earth is part of the largest grassroots environmental organisation, campaigning for solutions to the climate and nature crises. Solutions that will result in a fairer, greener world for everyone. With the UN Climate talks in Brazil this year – visit us at our stall to help build our tree of messages of hope and love for our forests! And to find out more about our campaigns and how you might get involved.
- Future Direction’s Green Superheroes
Say hi to the Future Direction’s Green Superheroes – making recycling and sustainability fun through arts and crafts, litter picks, and educational sessions for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
- Pinc College: Forest Ruptures
Connect with students from PINC college as they share their Forest Futures : Forest of Imagination project – a collaborative and growing art installation made by young people from across Greater Manchester. The students constructed a forest whose trees contain hidden hollows revealing surreal inner landscapes: glimmers of personal interests, emotions and safe spaces envisioned by the young artists who made them.
- Parents for Future Manchester
The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the largest global United Nations event for discussions and negotiations on climate change. Join Parents for Future to create posters with your message that you would like to send to changemakers at COP30 taking place this month.
- One World Together
“Imagine it’s the year 2060. The world is fair and kind to everyone. What do people’s lives look like in your town, in your country, or all around the world?” Join One World Together to imagine the equitable future we want to see and build together.