LONDON.- Ten museums across the UK have been long listed for the inaugural £10,000 Clore Award for Museum Learning. The new award is aimed at championing excellence in museum learning and is run in parallel with the Art Fund Prize, the UK’s largest arts prize celebrating excellence and innovation in museums and galleries across the UK.

Supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation, the Clore Award for Museum Learning 2011 will be presented on 15 June 2011. The award recognises quality, impact and innovation in using museums and galleries for learning activities and initiatives.

In tandem with the Art Fund Prize long list, the Clore Award long list is announced today. It comprises:

• Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne for Culture Shock – digital storytelling project in the North East

• Edward Jenner Museum, Gloucestershire for Ghosts in the Attic – From Smallpox to MMR: an attic room exhibition/installation uniting contemporary art & science.

• Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow for Touching Lives – exploring access to collections for visually impaired young people

• Keats House, London for Stories of the World – young people exploring world cultures at Keats House and Garden

• Museums Sheffield Millennium Gallery, Sheffield for With Sheba and Arwa (Belonging) – Engaging communities and young people in a programme of learning and co-curation inspired by the legacy of two great Yemeni queens, Bilqis (Queen of Sheba) and Arwa (Sayyida Hurra), and modern day experiences of UK-Arabic women

• National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth for Face to Face: Documenting experiences of conflict – An innovative film project with primary school pupils and veterans exploring the impact of war

• South London Gallery, London for Making Play – Adventures in creative play through contemporary art

•· The Courtauld Gallery, London for Animating Art History – an ongoing project which combines art history & animation for 6th Form & BTEC students from families with no prior engagement in higher education

• The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh for Air lomlaid / On Exchange – artist-led exhibition/education project, involving children from Skye & Edinburgh exploring their language, culture and environment and sharing their experience and inspiring schools throughout Scotland

• The Pitt Rivers Museum and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford for Making Museums – children design and make their own museums, from acquisition to exhibition, celebrating their identities

The Clore long list is selected by an expert judging panel, co-chaired by Dame Vivien Duffield DBE, Chairman of the Clore Duffield Foundation and Sally Bacon, Executive Director. They are joined by Cerrie Burnell, presenter on BBC CBeebies, Gerard Kelly, Editor of the Times Education Supplement, and Mark Taylor, Director of the Museums Association.

Sally Bacon, co-chair of the Clore Award for Museum Learning, said: “We were delighted to see such a diverse range of submissions in terms of scale, subject matter, location and reach. I realised early on that we weren’t looking for footprints in the sand, but for projects which had made a real and lasting impact on learners’ lives, and on the future work of the whole museum.

Our selection includes projects focused on digital storytelling; intergenerational work; the value of play; and children designing and making their own museums. All ten long listed projects demonstrate the power of museums to be active hubs of learning and engagement within their local rural or urban communities – and how important it is to keep such work going in this difficult economic climate.”