“The Youth Panel is a small commitment for such a huge personal gain.
Something I love is that the leaders of the panel and the people at the museums that we work with treat me like an adult, they value my opinion and I feel empowered to make changes that will engage youth in our local history.”
Youth Panel members
Our Youth Panel, for young people aged 14 – 18, offers collective work experience opportunities across The MERL and Reading Museum as part of Museums Partnership Reading’s youth programme. We meet monthly to work on a variety of exciting projects which are great for developing a range of transferable skills. Our panel members influence current projects and programming and are change-makers within Reading’s culture and heritage sector.
Our Youth Manifesto
The Panel created a Youth Manifesto over the course of two years in the form of a short documentary film. The Youth Manifesto was created by and with 40 young people in Greater Reading working alongside Real Time Film, who used participatory video to explore with young people how they currently experience and engage with museums and heritage, and how they would like to in future. You can see the Manifesto on The MERL blog
Join us!
The Museum of English Rural Life and Reading Museum are looking for enthusiastic individuals to join our Youth Panel.
As a member you will:
Help ensure the museums are relevant to young visitors
Gain behind-the-scenes museum experience working with museum professionals
Learn transferable skills
Have a fantastic project for your CV, UCAS or job application
Meet new people
Meetings will take place on the third Thursday of the month, online or in person, usually from 4:30 to 6pm.
Recent projects
- 'Reading Festival Is Rubbish!': Using a range of different debris and memorabilia left behind from Reading Festival stages, shops and camp site, Youth Panel members staged a pop-up exhibition in 2023 exploring the stories these artefacts tell and the messages they hold about today’s youth culture.
- Working on The ‘Digital Dig’ with the Royal Horticultural Society to unlock the stories of more than 28k nursery catalogues held by the RHS. The RHS invited the MERL Youth Panel to take these catalogues and the stories they tell as inspiration for a digital project providing support and specialist digital skills training to help make it a reality.
- Participating in the Youth Manifesto Project, exploring how the museums in Reading can be inspiring and engaging for and relevant to the young people of Reading.
- Working as curators for the Festival 50 exhibition project (2021). Panel members influenced the development of the exhibition marking the 1971 Reading Festival displayed at Reading Museum from August 2021. Panel members learned what is required to put on a public exhibition, researched, selected and interpreted items for display and worked with us in developing an exhibition which is appealing to the young people of Reading.
- Designing ‘The Nook at The MERL’, the new social learning space as part of the Our Country Lives redevelopment project. Students worked with museum staff and designers to create a new, relaxing space where students and the public are welcome to study, relax and reflect.
- Our Panel have organised two successful Museums at Night events, the ‘1951 Vintage Night’ and ‘Chalk or Cheese?’.
