Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
I can’t believe the last 12 months have flown by so quickly! Our first 5 trainees on the Identification Trainers for the Future project have now completed their traineeship with us and have been released into the wilds of the UK’s biodiversity sector, only now it’s with a whole host of new skills and a wealth …
Continue reading “A fond farewell | Identification Trainers for the Future”
In the final post of our short series on the curation placements of our Identification Trainers for the Future, Chloe Rose gives us an insight into the work she has been doing in the Hymenoptera department. The Hymenoptera include all bees, ants and wasps, but Chloe has been focussing her work on the parasitic wasps, of which there …
Continue reading “Building a key to the British Alexeter | Identification Trainers for the Future”
In our next blog from the Identification Trainers for the Future trainees, Mike Waller gives you an insight into his curation placement. Mike has been working through lichen collections made by Francis Rose MBE. Rose (1921-2006) is perhaps best known for being the author of The Wildflower Key, for many the guide to British & Irish plants, …
Continue reading “A crypt full of Rose’s lichens | Identification Trainers for the Future”
Currently all five trainees from the Identification Trainers for the Future project are nestled away within various departments in the Museum on their curation placements. Here, we catch up with Katy Potts: I have spent the past month in the Coleoptera department delving into the wonderful world of beetles. Part of my placement involves working on …
Continue reading “The beetles of Bookham Common | Identification Trainers for the Future”
Curation is a key part of the Identification Trainers for the Future programme and over the past 2 months the trainees have been on placement in the Museum collections learning how best to preserve the historical and ecological information held within them. Following on from Anthony’s review of his time with the Odonata collections, Sally Hyslop …
In 2009, I visited the Museum’s Darwin Centre for the first time. It had been a culmination of a pilgrimage to see as many exhibitions as possible that celebrated Charles Darwin’s bicentenary of his birth that year. Little did I realise that 6 years later, as a trainee on the Identification Trainers for the Future project, …
Continue reading “Darwin, dragons and damsels | Identification Trainers for the Future”
Our initial cohort of ID Trainers for the Future are nearing the end of Phase 2 of their 12-month long traineeship – Chloe Rose provides an update on the work they’ve been doing so far: Over the last six months you will have heard all about the vast array of workshops we’ve had delivered to us by the …
Continue reading “Reaching the halfway point | Identification Trainers for the Future”
In the latest update from our Identification Trainers for the Future project, Sally Hyslop continues the story of the work our five trainees have performed thus far. Trainee life in the Museum is often focused through a microscope and so, after many months of study, it was brilliant to refresh our zeal for the natural world this …
Our trainees on the Identification Trainers for the Future project have been extremely busy since our last blog post, here’s Mike Waller with an update on what they have been getting up to! Our timetables, until now a collage of various colours, have become a very busy reality over the last two months. We got …
Continue reading “A very busy time! | Identification Trainers for the Future”
This month it is the turn of Katy Potts to give us an update on the progress of the trainees on the Identification Trainers for the Future project. Since Anthony’s review of their first month with us the trainees have progressed onto Phase 2 of their programme, where their species identification training really starts in earnest and …
Continue reading “The Identification Work Begins! | Identification Trainers for the Future”