Join us for a live online talk and Q&A with Prof Rebecca Kilner FRS, Director of the Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. Hear about her fascinating research into animal behaviour, and how recent work on the parental behaviour of burying beetles is changing our understanding of evolution. Ask your questions and find out more about the Museum, its collections, and how they are being harnessed for research and engagement.

Travelling through the seasons we will explore the history, folklore and culture of three wild plants in bloom (or at least in foliage!) that month. The session will encourage you to search out plants in all seasons and enjoy the history in folklore and culture, and their use for medicines, cooking as well as the many and varied traditional names which help us trace that history.

Travelling through the seasons we will explore the history, folklore and culture of three wild plants in bloom (or at least in foliage!) that month. The session will encourage you to search out plants in all seasons and enjoy the history in folklore and culture, and their use for medicines, cooking as well as the many and varied traditional names which help us trace that history.

Session1: Wed 8 Feb, Session 2: Wed 15 Feb, Session 3: Wed 22 Feb

Take an everyday vegetable, and turn it into a lovely botanical illustration.  Using a small palette of coloured pencils Janie will guide you through the stages to make your piece of artwork amazingly realistic.  You will be sent an image in advance, so that you’re ready to colour as soon as the course begins.  Full instructions on how to do this and a kit of everything you will need will be posted to you.

The eighteenth-century landscape garden is frequently hailed as being Britain’s greatest contribution to European culture. Its seductively simple formula made famous by Capability Brown, combined elegance with economic viability, and triumphed over the fashion for French formalism. Its genesis, however, was far from serene.

Travelling through the seasons we will explore the history, folklore and culture of three wild plants in bloom (or at least in foliage!) that month. The session will encourage you to search out plants in all seasons and enjoy the history in folklore and culture, and their use for medicines, cooking as well as the many and varied traditional names which help us trace that history.

Session 1: Sat 21 Jan, Session 2: Sat 4 Feb, Session 3: Sat 18 Feb, Session 4: Sat 4 Mar, Sat 5: Sat 18 Mar

Join Paul Herrington, who will share his top tips and skills to help you to make a start designing your own garden. Across five sessions you will explore design principles, ideas and inspiration, simple surveying and scale drawing, planning for the right plant in the right place as well as developing a layout plan for your own garden and how to ensure year round structure and interest.

Museums like ours contain specimens that belonged to scientific heroes such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed the answers to the question of how species evolved. Their stories have been well told; however, they did not work alone. What’s often missing from the histories are the countless local and Indigenous experts who contributed so much to our understanding of the natural world, by collecting specimens for the likes of Darwin and Wallace.

Join us for a talk that explores how Western European religious painting was embraced and transformed by women and queer artists working in 19th and 20th century Britain. The talk relates to works from the Fitzwilliam collection.

This talk will also be livestreamed - if you would prefer to join us online, please go to our separate booking page