Explore the Museum
As well as our fascinating collection, the Sedgwick Museum has a great variety of activities, interactives and trails to get stuck into while you are here. Here you can explore what our gallery can offer if you are visiting with children or if you enjoy a trail or getting crafty yourself.
Tours at the Sedgwick Museum
We run regular lunchtime tours and you can attend either our Staff Favourites Tours during which one of our enthusiastic staff members shows you their favourite parts of the Museum, or, our Bridging Binaries tour focusing on four Queer stories in the Museum that have gone untold until recently.
Bridging Binaries
After conducting some LGBTQ+ tours in the past, we were eager to reignite them again but with some new stories. Department of Earth Sciences undergraduate student Layo Danbury, researched and created a brand new tour focusing on four Queer stories within the Museum. This placement and project was funded by the University of Cambridge Diversity Fund.
The tours run once every two weeks, presented by Sedgwick Museum staff members. Want to attend a tour? Find out more details here.
Staff Favourites
At the Sedgwick Museum, we have many staff members who love to share their favourite things in the Museum. Giant deer, fossil fish teeth, the rocks that built Cambridge... just some of the specimens on display that our staff can't wait to discuss with you.
These tours run once every two weeks. Want to attend a tour? Find our more here.
Trails and Resources
We have an array of trails available that you can complete during your visit. They are a great option if you are visiting the Museum with children or if you prefer to experience our collection in a more structured way.
Museum Trails
We have a wide range of trails available for you to choose from as you arrive.
The highlights trail centres around our top 10 most popular exhibits. The trail guides you to the exhibits where you can find a hidden letter. Once you have found all the letters, they can be rearranged to make a word. It is a great option if you want a more streamlined visit to the Museum.
This trail was made as an alternative to the LGBTQ+ tours highlighting the same stories, along with one extra, but allowing you to take it at your own pace. Using the map, you can visit five locations around the Museum, each marked by a small plaque. There is information about each story within the trail.
The alphabet challenge asks visitors to find something in the Sedgwick Museum beginning with every letter in the alphabet. This is one of our harder challenges and takes a bit longer to complete. If you can't find all the letters, check with a staff member and they can give you a hint.
If you are a dinosaur fan, this trail might be for you! The sheet shows various dinosaur specimens in our collections which you are encouraged to locate. Each specimen has some information and a question or statement encouraging further learning.
This trail is for those visitors who enjoy sketching. It asks you to draw something really big, and really spiny or spikey for example. This trail encourages you to draw the specimens that have drawn your attention allowing you to delve deeper into what interests you the most.
Book Trolley
There is a book trolley located in the Museum which provides lots of children's books on Earth Sciences and museum topics. The majority of books are in English but other languages are featured too. Surrounding the trolly are chairs and beanbags allowing you to settle down comfortably while reading.
There is also a collection of books for adults sitting on the desks by two of the windows in the same area.
Interactives and Activities
In addition to exploring our captivating collections on display, there are interactives and activities scattered around the Museum providing opportunities for further learning but also a chance to relax.
Puzzles
There are 2 puzzle stations within the gallery providing a fun activity to spend some time on before getting back to exploring. Within our Charles Darwin exhibit, you can put together a two layer puzzle of the HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin travelled on from 1831-1836. It is a tricky one so may take some time to complete. Another puzzle station is available at the other end of the Museum where you can put together a colourful ammonite and try another 2 layer challenge, this time made up of pre-historic animals. Each puzzle offers an opportunity for a peaceful moment of focus before getting back to our collection.
Colouring
There are colouring stations in the Museum where you can take a seat and colour in a dinosaur of your choice. It is a great opportunity to take some time to rest part way through your visit. The dinosaurs you can colour would have once roamed Cambridge and were drawn by a Sedgwick Museum member of staff.
Interactives
There are multiple interactives in our gallery providing the opportunity to learn and experience our collections in a different way.
As part of our Magma to Magnets exhibition, you can spin a wheel to feel the difference between a normal magnet and one made with rare Earth Elements. Will there be a difference in strength? You will have to find out!
In the Darwin exhibit, you can discover the different ways to analyse rocks on a computer, get an insight into a researcher's desktop, look at a virtual microscope and watch a short film about an exhibition to the Galapagos. You can also get hands on and touch different types of volcanic rock. This is a great way to understand the different textures volcanic rocks can be.
Explore Further
Continue to explore other aspects of the Museum
