Discovering Ancient Sudan: Creating Aspirations takes school children on a virtual tour of discovery

A team of UCL students joined Anna Garnett, curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptology, to create a set of learning resources for pupils from George Mitchell Primary School in the London borough of Waltham Forest.

This project aimed to teach the children about ancient Sudanese archaeology and introduce them to some of the amazing items in the Petrie Museum’s collection. Due to the pandemic, the school children were unable to physically visit the museum or UCL, and so students from across UCL produced a series of short films and a resource booklet to introduce them to this topic and the university. 

‘Discovering Ancient Sudan’ was this year’s direction for the Creating Aspirations project, which has run since 2018 and has built a positive and long-lasting relationship between UCL and George Mitchell Primary School. 

The project aims to broaden the horizons of children from a borough which has some of the highest child poverty rates in London, in this case giving them the opportunity to learn about ancient Sudan through real artifacts.

Each academic year, this has involved teams of students on the Museums and Galleries in Education MA working with Year 5 children; this year’s student team consisted of Yifei He, Ditte Rasmussen, Celine Romano, Xinxin Wang and Yibing Zhao. 

Creating Aspirations is part of the UCL East schools engagement programme, which aims to embed the university into the local community by working with schools around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Discover the resources made available to the children