‘It’s the best trip we ever had because it was four trips all together’.
This blog is about the University of Birmingham visit by Paganel Primary Year 6 and was written by Archives After-school club, yr6:
We went to University of Birmingham and looked around ‘Old Joe’ the clocktower and walked around the old building. The clock tower has LED lighting so it can go different colours.
Then we went to the Barber Institute, in the middle of the University. It was very nice because Mrs Barber donated so many pictures and still helps it run after she’s died.
We looked more at some of the self-portrait paintings. It was interesting to find out what they meant. Like the one where the man was in black and holding a skull. When you look at it at first it’s just a portrait, but when read what’s underneath and look a little harder you can see more what it means.
One picture was unknown who it was, and it was a picture of a woman who had sorrow on her face. I was curious about who it might be and why they were sad, because there wasn’t much known about it.
There was a painting of Jesus with the dark soldier next to him. It looked like a demon behind him, all black with a scary face. I like scary stuff, it’s fascinating and I want to know more about it.
‘Then we went to the archives. This was my favourite bit.’
When we visited the people at Cadbury Research Library. They had all the archives locked up downstairs, all protected. They showed us how they conserved it by bathing the paper in water. They ‘relaxed’ the paper by spraying it before the bath (see photo top of page).
We also saw a letter written by Neville Chamberlain to Adolf Hitler before the second world war, as well as lots of other archived things.
Roary the Allosaurus
At the Lapworth museum we met Roary the Allosaurus. He broke two bones in his ribs and toe, so he couldn’t fight and he couldn’t eat, and that’s why he died.
I liked the crystals, the stuffed animals and the fossils. There was a stuffed possum too.
Make sure you visit the University and all the free places you can go and find out things too.
Please visit uni and see more of our photos in our archive, or see last year’s visit blogpost.
I asked our Year 6 Archive After-school club members three questions about what they want to do, where they want to live and a favourite moment or advice for people starting Paganel. Here’s what they said:
Mrs Jackson explains about her last job, teaching on a boat. There were different challenges to teaching – often there was a wider age range – and returning back to teaching in the UK after a period of time a lot of things had changed, or was new, like phonics. 
Mrs Lovell explains about her favourite moment at Paganel Primary School when she was married by the Headteacher.
Paganel Archives After-school club interview Mrs Sanders who is a Teaching Assistant at Paganel Primary School. Mrs Sanders explains why she doesn’t want to be Head Teacher at Paganel Primary School. She talks about what she enjoys about her job: 
Mr. Clayton, the sports teacher at Paganel Primary, has been someone we’ve been wanting to interview since the beginning of the year – Paganel Archive After-school club were able to find him off the football pitch after school last week , to ask questions about his time at Paganel Primary school…
