The UC Teece Museum enjoyed a super successful April holiday period. Overall, we welcomed 2534 visitors of all ages through the gallery – though the majority of our visitors were definitely under 10 years!
We had two in-house activities on offer – the LEGO mini-figure hunt themed around Shakespeare aptly named ‘Much ado about mini-figures’, and a ‘Make your own Trojan Horse’ craft sheet. The Trojan Horse activity was part of our contribution towards Kia Auaha, the Autumn family trail which we participated in alongside Canterbury Museum, Christchurch Art Gallery, the Botanic Gardens, Tūranga Library, and the Arts Centre.
Each of our activities were also official Children’s University learning destination activities, which meant that children in the programme could earn half hour participation stamps for completing each task.
In addition to the self-drive activities, in the first week the Teece also ran a special workshop at Darfield Library, in collaboration with Selwyn Libraries. This was a workshop for 7-12 year olds focussed on ancient Greek gods and heroes. We followed that up with a workshop at the Teece in the second week of the holidays on Papercraft, with special guest tutor Meg Nicoll, also aimed at 7-12 year olds. Both workshops were fully booked out.
All out activities were included as part of the Arts Centre’s school holiday programme, which meant that we benefitted from their promotion, including the newsletter and online advertising. The extra reach they have certainly makes a difference, and the upwards trend in our visitor numbers is continuing, as the Teece has already welcomed over 10,800 visitors in 2025.
The small team of gallery hosts did an amazing job helping families with the activities and making sure everyone felt welcomed, which
