As you might have picked up elsewhere on these museum exhibit pages work experience at Mythstories museum for year 11 and year 13 students was a regular occurrence and all students that took part left some kind of legacy. In 2008, work experience students Holly Byrne and Daragh Quinn were challenged with turning a display case that had been donated to Mythstories by storyteller, Helen East, into a ‘Little Box of Shropshire Treasures‘ during their two week sojourn in the museum.

That involved researching stories of the mythical creatures of some of the county’s diverse landscapes and breathing life into them so they could be discovered by visitors inside the drawers of the cabinet, like stories frozen in time.

Holly and Daragh rose to the challenge. The asrai from the bottom of Ellesmere Lake was created by Holly; she took the model home one night to bake the clay figure in the oven, and by the end of their term both Holly and Daragh had permanently green fingers from dying each strand of the mermaid-like creature’s hair. In the other drawers they had models of Ippikin with the long chin, a robber knight from Wenlock Edge, a unicorn and sundry other mythical characters and beasts. The Little Box of Shropshire Treasures is now with with The Titterstone Clee Heritage Trust.

And below as a bonus we include details of Charlotte and Chloe transforming a dolls house in 2014…

And lastly we go back to the Summer of 2007 when a good friend of the museum got in touch to ask if we could use his Mother’s old sea chest. It was a little battered and bruised by age, but we could immediately see a use for it in a story museum, so we quickly, and gratefully accepted the offer of a new exhibit.

We enlisted the help and creativity of Bethan and Jess two talented work experience students we had working with us and tasked them with its transformation into an environment for the creation of sea stories. Well, what better use for a sea chest is there than that?

Two weeks later it was ready to be discovered and explored by museum visitors. Youngster from our Storycraft club made sea creatures for the box and a very long treasure map from a role of wallpaper and it was firmly anchored in the museum transporting visitors on a voyage of the imagination for many a year. We now use it to house the Mythstories archives.