We went down to the National Justice Museum in Nottingham to join a home ed group for an organised tour and workshop. The day was split between a tour of the museum in the morning and then a courtroom workshop after lunch. The cost was £11 per person and accompanying adults had to pay too.
The Museum is a fascinating place where you can see how justice was served as far back as medieval times. There were plenty of displays to look at and stories about real people who were imprisoned there.
The afternoon session though was by far the best bit. We took part in an interactive courtroom workshop based on the case of the Suffragette Mary Richardson who was accused of damaging the painting The Rokeby Venus at The National Gallery. The children played the roles of judge, jury, defence and prosecution. We were given advance information and the children were assigned roles. Agatha was the judge and Peggy the defence barrister and so they had to get really familiar with the case and learn about what their roles were.
Our girls did brilliantly: Peggy cross-examined the witnesses very well and Agatha kept order in the courtroom. They both got really into their roles and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
At the end of the trial, the jury reached a guilty verdict and discussed what sentence Ms Richardson should get based on other cases.
There are other cases you can do and I’ve since found out that they do these workshops up in Manchester. We’d love to do another one when the girls are a bit older and can think a bit more on their feet. Some of the children taking part were much younger and so they struggled with answering questions in the dock. I suspect with older children you’d get much more dialogue and heated exchanges!
We finished off the day with a quick trip to the City of Caves just down the road. This was a look round the famous underground passageways of Nottingham which have been used throughout the centuries for various reasons. Unfortunately we were really disappointed with these. We were in and out in around 30 mins which was not good value for money at all!
