50 years of Museum in a Box

In 2015, the Australian Museum celebrated the 50th anniversary of Museum in a Box

It has been an exciting year in Outreach at the Australian Museum and the highlight for me was the anniversary of Museum in a Box®.

The Australian Museum started work on the Museum in a Box® program in the 1960s. 50 Years on the programs has grown to include 150 boxes covering 30 different topics providing quality educational resources for people of all ages. Each box contains a treasure trove of real specimens and artefacts, background information and activities highlighting the Australian Museum collections and research.

Over the last 50 years the Australian Museum has expanded Museum in a Box® beyond schools into early childhood centres and preschools, councils, libraries, universities, regional museum and recently into age care facilities. Our evaluation shows that the most valued component in Museum in a Box® continues to be the real museum specimens - a taxidermied bat, an embedded insect, a painted blue tongue lizard cast and hands on resources. Yet we can’t exclude digital media - video footage of animals in action, images from a scanning electron microscope, 3D printed models and digitised collections. The Museum in a Box® program showcases the best of both worlds.

In 2014 the Museum in a Box® program reached 60 000 school students across NSW and Australia with an additional 45 000 people through outreach activities, festivals and events.

Museum in a Box® is one of the longest running education outreach programs in Australia. To recognise this achievement the Australian Museum is offering Museum in a Box® free to NSW regional schools in 2015.

In 2015 we loaned 550 boxes across NSW and beyond and participated in amazing events reaching 70,000 students and the community.

Over the last 50 years hundreds of schools, thousands of teachers and over a million students have used Museum in a Box® as a learning and teaching resource.