Indie Interview: The Story Museum

Tell us a bit about The Story Museum and how it all started (along with the various aspects that make it up)

Founded in 2005, The Story Museum is on a mission to share great ways to engage with great stories.

Through our immersive galleries and creative learning programme, we celebrate stories in all forms and harness their power to enhance young lives.  Our activities are interactive, multi-sensory and designed to encourage parents, carers and children to spend time together enjoying stories in many different ways.

We began with temporary exhibitions in a former post office and telephone exchange building in the centre of Oxford. We re-opened in May 2021, after a £6 million redevelopment, working with 50 designers, makers and creatives to bring a host of stories to life in immersive gallery and activity spaces.

When you visit our museum, you can travel through thousands of years of oral stories in the Whispering Wood, where every tree has a story to tell. Our Enchanted Library invites visitors to wander through magical story worlds to explore 200 years of classics on pages, stage and screen – you can fall down a rabbit hole, fly with a snowman or step through a wardrobe into Narnia and much more.

What is going on this year at the museum? Any specific events or exhibitions that you are looking forward to?

There are so many wonderful things on offer this year at The Story Museum. Alongside our amazing galleries, visitors can step into a vault of dragon lore with our Here Be Dragons exhibition.

Saturday 5th July marks the annual Alice’s Day festival, when Oxford transforms into a Wonderland for all to enjoy. As part of the festivities, we will be unveiling Snarks and Riddles, a giant interactive game inspired by the stories of Lewis Carroll and designed by our Story Curators, a team of budding designers age 11-16 working with our professional team. 

July will also see an exciting new experience open at the museum, dedicated to the evolution of storytelling in video games. Visitors will have the opportunity to step inside a magical arcade to play and experience a series of games and activities that illustrate how storytelling has advanced in this hugely popular story form. More details will be announced soon.

And of course, our events programme runs throughout the year with regular favourites such as Emma Boor’s Suitcase Stories and Fairytales For Grown Ups with The Crick Crack Club alongside shows, workshops and much more.

I see that the ‘Here be Dragons…Co-Curated by Cressida Cowell, Toothless’ exhibition has been extended to next year! What can people expect from this exhibition?

Like all our galleries, Here Be Dragons is an immersive, sensory experience. It’s an exploration of dragons from across cultures. Dragons are such a big topic that we needed to create a kind of ‘vault of dragon lore’ to get it all together.

Our temporary exhibition space, known as The Treasure Chamber, has been transformed into a cave of dragons, filled with every sort of dragon from across the world – from Chinese water dragons to Norse dragons to the Soup Dragon from the Clangers.

We are so thrilled that Cressida Cowell, author of the How to Train Your Dragon series, has co-curated the exhibition, along with Toothless, one of her most beloved dragon characters. He and Cressida, along with some other characters from the books, act as your guides throughout the exhibition. There are mini-displays of Cressida demonstrating her drawing, so you can see the characters coming to life before your eyes. 

The space is laid out so that visitors feel like they’re transported into a lost realm. There are wonderful details that are perfectly placed for children to discover. For example, you’ll find little drawings hidden behind a curtain that children can crawl behind; there are ‘smell boxes’ at knee height so you can even imagine what a dragon smells like. 

Many visitors have been intrigued by the famous ‘pickled dragon’ which is on loan to us for the exhibition. The pickled dragon became a huge global news story just over twenty years ago. It was part of a hoax played by its owner Alistair Mitchell, who used it as a publicity stunt to promote his dragon-themed novels. In fact, it’s been made by a specialist prop company, so it looks very convincing!

Tell us more about your work as a registered charity, and the impact that it has had over the years.

We’ve been a charity since the very beginning of our story. We know that stories are like rocket fuel for children’s learning, so it’s our mission to bring this power to as many families and young people as we can. Lots of people know us for our talking trees, giant storytelling bed, and magical wardrobe, but they might not realise just how many schools, youth groups, and family centres we’re working with every day. 

 We reach nearly 13,000 children, parents and carers, and teachers each year through our outreach work, much of which is delivered across multiyear partnerships. We’re in it for the long haul because we want to create real change for communities in Oxford who need our support, of which there are many. 26% of people here live below the poverty line and learning outcomes are much poorer than people imagine. We’re here to play our part in changing that. 

What made you decide to join the Independent Oxford Community?

Not only are we a museum and registered charity, but we also run an independent café and book and gift shop. Both Ruby, who manages our shop, and Hannah, our food and beverage manager, work very hard to find products that are locally and sustainably produced. Much of the produce used in the café is from the local area, and in our shop, you’ll find a carefully selected range of books and toys. For example, we’ve just started stocking a children’s clothing range by Ducky Zebra, a fellow Independent Oxford member that creates gorgeous, durable clothing using organic, sustainably produced cotton.  We wanted to share that with the Independent Oxford community, encourage shoppers to visit our bookshop and café, and of course, be part of an exciting network of independent shops and businesses across the county. 

The shop at the museum has a dyslexia-friendly section, how does the shop cater to diverse learning styles, particularly with the inclusion of graphic novels and a dyslexia-friendly section?

We stock a wide array of books to suit all readers and interest levels. Graphic novels and comics can be a great way into reading, and these are some of our bestsellers. We want to share the joy of stories and reading with as many people as possible, so try to have an exciting range of books to appeal to all. The Story Museum celebrates stories in all forms, and this is reflected in our book and gift shop.

How can people get involved and support with various aspects of the museum?

If you’re age 7-16 and interested in finding out what goes on behind the scenes, there are lots of ways to get involved with The Story Museum.

Our Youth Collections Ambassadors (Age 11-16) or Collections Club (7-11) members are invited to review, recommend and suggest stories to be included in our collection.  Story Curators (age 11-16) is for budding designers who would like to learn how exhibitions and installations are created. Our next major temporary exhibition in 2026 will be co-designed in collaboration with our Story Curators team, I am very excited to see the results!

We have a very busy and dedicated team of volunteers (age 13+) who offer invaluable support with a variety of activities in and around the Museum including helping in the galleries and our events programme. We are very proud to be able to offer youth volunteering opportunities for young people aged 13+, the only museum in Oxford currently able to do so.  If you have any time to commit to supporting us and our mission, please head to our website for more information.

Finally, if you’re thinking of doing a challenge or would like to plan a fundraising event, please consider doing it in support of The Story Museum and play a real part in our work to support children’s literacy, creativity, and wellbeing. Alternatively, you can become a Friend of the museum or join our 1001 Fellowship and have your name or perhaps the name of a loved one in our Enchanted Library. We’re incredibly grateful to all our supporters for their generosity; we wouldn’t be here without them. 

As you can see for yourself, The Story Museum has so much going on and there are various ways in which you can get involved.

Head over to The Story Museum website to explore everything going on.