Since 2012, we’ve undertaken projects of all shapes and sizes. To deliver this program, we’ve collaborated with a huge variety of organisations – from the University, local area and further afield. Find out more about our past ventures here: 

Annual Reviews
Giving an overview of our work in each year, you can read our annual reviews online.
2021-2022 Year in Numbers
2020-2021 A year like no other
2018-2019 Highlights

Operation Survival and Cambridge Codebreakers: The Last Secret
We partnered with Fire Hazard Games to deliver two high-octane digital adventure games across a number of our museums. Imagine head-scratching puzzles and a madcap rush between venues (not in the galleries!). Find out more on our Collections in Action blog:
Operation Survival
Cambridge Codebreakers: turning museum visitors into players
Cambridge Codebreakers: developing a codebreaking adventure across four museums
2017-2019

India Unboxed
To mark the UK-India Year of Culture 2017, we celebrated a shared season on the theme of India - a programme of exhibitions, events, digital encounters, discussions, installations and more within the museums and the city of Cambridge.
Rooted in our collections, the programme explored themes of identity and connectivity for audiences in both the UK and India, with support from Arts Council England. Read the India Unboxed Evaluation Report
2017-18

The Museum as Method
This conference, run in collaboration with the University's Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH), brought together scholars from disciplines interested in material culture and curators from across the arts and sciences, to reflect on both questions of methodology and public policy.
2016 

Curating Cambridge
Curating Cambridge: our city, our stories, our stuff was a collaborative arts and cultural season which took place over October and November 2014. Read the Curating Cambridge Evaluation Report
2014

Artist in Residence, North West Cambridge Development
The Artist in Residence programme at the North West Cambridge Development ran throughout the development of the site, with three artists being appointed each year. 
2014-2016

Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration
In 2014, Discoveries, the first major show to bring together the fascinating collections from all eight University of Cambridge Museums, took place at London's Two Temple Place and the Fitzwilliam Museum.
2014

House Guests
From March to July 2013 specimens, objects and artworks from the University of Cambridge Museums and collections took up residence at Kettle's Yard. The 'guests', from butterflies to Inuit carving, invited visitors to see Kettle's Yard in a new light and to discover more about the University of Cambridge Museums.
2013

Thresholds
In 2012 Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy invited ten of the best UK poets writing today to take part in a series of residencies at the University of Cambridge Museums. Each poet spent time in their host museum or collection, exploring the collection and working with young people, helping them to develop their critical thinking skills as well as their writing.
2012-13

What's On

Kettle's Yard
25 Nov 2021
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The Consone Quartet are a young string quartet with a really big future. They play with perfect intonation, tremendous attack, and impeccable historical style. All the four instruments work together with such intelligence and imagination, that I would happily listen to them every day.Sir Roger Norrington

Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring The Consone Quartet.

Kettle's Yard
24 Feb 2022
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Rebeca Omordia is half Romanian, half Nigerian – and it’s a powerful combination! Rebeca’s technique knows no bounds but, more importantly, she plays with a depth of insight and understanding which is all too rare today. Julian Lloyd Webber, London Magazine

Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring pianist Rebeca Omordia.

Kettle's Yard
03 Mar 2022
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They get to the heart and soul of Haydn’s paradoxical affections  The Scotsman

Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring The Maxwell Quartet and Anthony Friend.

Kettle's Yard
10 Mar 2022
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Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring Gweneth-Ann Rand and Simon Lepper.

Kettle's Yard
17 Mar 2022
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Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring the Sacconi Quartet and Daniel Tong.

Kettle's Yard
24 Mar 2022
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Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring pianist Ivana Gavrić.

Kettle's Yard
05 May 2022
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Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring pianist Melvyn Tan.

…the most thoughtful, elegant and refined of pianists… everything seemed to illuminate everything else. The Guardian UK

Kettle's Yard
12 May 2022
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Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring the Solem Quartet.

…it was the Solem Quartet’s strong emotional connection to [the] music which really shone through. I have no doubt that the future of Classical Music is safe in their hands. The Yorkshire Times

Kettle's Yard
19 May 2022
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Join us for a Chamber Music concert in the Kettle’s Yard House featuring Fenella Humphreys on solo violin.

...Humphreys’s utter absorption and delight shines forth at every turn… strong-toned, easy fluidity and immaculate technique… Gramophone Magazine

Kettle's Yard
26 May 2022
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Join us for the last concert of our 2021-22 Chamber Music season in the Kettle’s Yard House, featuring Alexander Baillie on cello and pianist Nigel Yandell.

The Fitzwilliam Museum
05 Oct 2021
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Magdalene Odundo DBE is one of the greatest ceramic artists working today. Her distinctive, burnished vessels are informed by a range of art and craft traditions from around the world.

This display marks 50 years since Odundo moved from Kenya to Cambridge to take an Art Foundation Course at Cambridge School of Art.

Museum of Classical Archaeology
28 Sep 2021

An exhibition of photographs by Robert McCabe capturing the 1955 excavations at Mycenae.

Kettle's Yard
16 Oct 2021
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Spanning the artist’s extensive career, this will be the first substantial solo show in 14 years of British Indian artist Sutapa Biswas (b. 1962).

Museum of Zoology
23 Oct 2021

Come and find all the sleepy sloths hiding in the Museum this half term!

Museum of Zoology
03 Nov 2021

Animal Afterlives: a photography exhibition on taxidermy by Alexandra Murphy

Museum of Zoology
01 Dec 2021
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Are reindeer really the best animals to pull a sleigh? Find out at this live event

The Fitzwilliam Museum
04 Nov 2021
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An exclusive early morning tour of our exhibition, Magdalene Odundo in Cambridge, with members of the team behind the show.

Kettle's Yard
29 Oct 2021
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Join us for an online panel discussion with exhibition artist Sutapa Biswas, black feminist writer Lola Olufemi and writer and curator Gilane Tawadros. We will explore formal and conceptual considerations that are key to the language of Biswas’ art, whilst also looking at her contribution to the Black Arts Movement – a cluster of politicised artistic activities by artists of colour.

Kettle's Yard
28 Jan 2022
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Join us for a late-night opening of Sutapa Biswas: Lumen at Kettle’s Yard. Explore the exhibition after hours, enjoy a drink and have fun.

Kettle's Yard
07 Nov 2021
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Join us in our Clore Learning Studio for free, practical art making workshops. Respond to the displays and exhibitions to make your own artworks. Get creative with artists and our education volunteers, no previous art experience needed!

Kettle's Yard
21 Nov 2021
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Join us in our Clore Learning Studio for free, practical art making workshops. Respond to the displays and exhibitions to make your own artworks. Get creative with artists and our education volunteers, no previous art experience needed!

Kettle's Yard
05 Nov 2021
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Early Years Studio is a fun, creative, immersive experience for children aged 0-4. The sessions are designed with early years development in mind. Artists draw upon their expertise as early years facilitators and use the Kettle’s Yard ethos and collection to create sessions where babies, toddlers and their carers can experience and learn together.

 

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
13 Nov 2021
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You may find some seasonal surprises in the Garden this winter...

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
20 Oct 2021
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Autumn is a special time of year when the Garden’s 2,000-strong tree collection really shines.

The Polar Museum
06 Nov 2021
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A guest film programme of shorts curated by award-winning Greenlandic filmmaker Inuk Jørgensen on the themes of Storytelling & Life including a 30 minute recorded discussion with the filmmakers.

The Polar Museum
07 Nov 2021
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Celebrating 2021 International Inuit Day, Native Spirit Festival, in partnership with The Polar Museum and Inuk filmmaker & actor, Vinnie Karetak, present shorts and animations from Nunavut bringing stories of Inuit survivance in the Arctic and tales of supernatural and horror.

The Fitzwilliam Museum
25 Nov 2021
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Enjoy an after-hours evening at the Museum with an opportunity to visit the Gold of the Great Steppe exhibition, pop-up talks, workshops (booking required) and late night shopping.

Kettle's Yard
24 Nov 2021
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Join us for our next in-person teachers evening exploring the new exhibition Sutapa Biswas: Lumen with artist Lucy Steggals.

Kettle's Yard
02 Dec 2021
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Join us for the first concert in our New Music 2021/22 series. Bastard Assignments and Kathryn Williams will be performing in the House.

Kettle's Yard
09 Dec 2021
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Join us for a New Music concert with soprano Juliet Fraser.

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
01 Dec 2021
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Turn detective and join in with this fun family trail to solve the crime of the nibbled pine cones.

Kettle's Yard
13 Oct 2021
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Kettle’s Yard is delighted to be one of several institutions around the world celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ivorypress, a renowned publisher of artists’ books based in Madrid.

The Polar Museum

Join us for our new wellbeing and making workshops at the Polar Museum! Meet and Make at the Museum sessions are all about giving you a supportive and social space to be creative.

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
29 Jan 2022
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Learn three different embroidery stitches and use buttons, bows, beads and fabric scraps to create a floral greetings card

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
03 Feb 2022
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Join tutor Jackie Bennett to find out more about the lives and motivations of some of our greatest painters

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
10 Feb 2022
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Immerse yourself in both the aesthetics of the period, and the wit and wisdom of Austen

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
21 Feb 2022
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Examine the changes in the flora of arable land over the past century and the actions taken to bring wild flora back to farmland

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

Come and visit the Earth Clinic on Saturday 23rd April at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. 

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
12 May 2022
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Take a journey through the major discoveries in genetics that have relied on the brilliant and fascinating world of plants

Cambridge University Botanic Garden 
08 Mar 2022
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Learn how to draw plants in accurate detail, both in the classroom and the Glasshouse Range