Oxford Museums Win Guardian Family Friendly Award

Staff at two Oxford museums are finding it very hard to wipe huge grins off their faces at the moment. They've won the Guardian newspaper's Family Friendly Museum Award for 2005!

The winners were chosen by a team of junior judges aged between eight and sixteen.

Here's the panel in action, voting on the winner. Looks as if rather a lot of pizza helped them through the difficult job of deciding.

© The Guardian.

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History and its partner museum, the Pitt Rivers fought off stiff competition to win the award - and they're thrilled.

What's the Award all about?

The Guardian is a national newspaper. A couple of years ago they began a campaign called 'Kids in Museums' which is all about trying to make museums and galleries welcome children and their families.

The campaign began after one of the paper's journalists, Dea Birkett, was asked to leave a very famous art gallery because her toddler son shouted "Monster!" at a statue of a.... well, a monster.

This is Iona, one of the junior judges.

"Adults often try and imagine what children want," she told Show Me, "but children know what they want."

© 24 Hour Museum.

Dea wrote about her experience in the newspaper and pretty soon had heard from hundreds of parents who were fed up with feeling unwelcome in museums and galleries.

The campaign grew... ending up with these awards. One of the most important things about the Awards is that museums are nominated by their vistors and, of course, the winners are chosen by children.

Now we know, and Show Me surfers know, that thousands of museums around the UK make a HUGE effort for children.

Loads of them make visits really interesting and good fun for all of us. Just take a look at our Places To Go pages and you'll find heaps of fantastic, welcoming places to visit.

If you have a favourite museum, gallery or science centre that isn't on our Places to Go section, please let us know and we'll add them in.

One of the most famous exhibits at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History is a dodo.

Why not see what you can find out about this famous bird on their website?

There are great jokes pages and a Discover section too.

So - if you live anywhere near Oxford you know where to go when you fancy a day out! Congratulations to both museums from all of us here at Show Me.