Save the date for our annual Autumn celebration and pumpkins in the park family friendly event with Stroud Valleys Project. This year our theme is a Green Halloween! Drop in from 2.30pm to enjoy creative craft activities using recycled or natural materials, making flying bats and seasonal headdresses. Get money saving tips on how to source costumes and make decorations that are planet-friendly and fun. Don your homemade costume and bring along your carved pumpkin, marrow or turnip by 4.45pm for a chance to win a prize. A family friendly event for all ages. Free entry, cakes and drinks available to buy. The day will end with a chance to view your carved lantern creations lit up outside the museum between 5.30pm - 6pm.

Come and join Natasha Houseago who will be running an outdoor charcoal drawing workshop using her tiny Indian, jewellery making forge to make stick charcoal in old tobacco tin ovens. 

Natasha will prepare ash drawing boards so you can make some ‘Earth Fire Iron’ exhibition inspired charcoal drawings on the boards. 

It might be interesting to look at how nature has inspired Alan Evan's beautiful metal work, and work by young makers such as Neve Taylor-Bridges whose sculpture ‘Arachne’ is on display in the Walled Garden. From Spider's webs, to stalks and leaves there are so many natural references in the exhibition. 

You will be able to take your drawing home after it's been spray varnished. All ages welcome, but please wear warm layers! Hot drinks and cakes available to buy inside.

Free, donations welcome, part of the Earth Fire Iron programme.

Join Gaynor from Stroudwater Textile Trust and have fun with Halloween-themed crafts, making spooky spiders or scary masks or maybe even a glow-in-the-dark trick or treat bag. All ages welcome, a free family drop-in workshop in our downstairs Meeting Room, for parents/carers and children to enjoy together.

Blacksmiths, those 'wizards of metal and flame', have been revered … and feared … down the long reach of time and across many cultures.  Their skills of creation have become the stuff of legend, and the smiths themselves are central to many traditional tales. Storytellers Fiona Eadie and Kirsty Hartsiotis will forge some of these tales anew in this afternoon session to spark your imagination!

For all aged 6 and over.

Tickets £5 for adults, £3 for children.

Booking essential - book online or call 01453 763394

Part of the Earth Fire Iron programme

Smiths stands apart. They hold the magic of creation in the hands, wrought of fire and ore into metals that might become the finest of jewels or the sharpest of blades. Step into a world of darkness, fire and transformation with storytellers Fiona Eadie and Kirsty Hartsiotis, to discover ancient smithing legends from two shapeshifting magicians to Freya’s golden necklace and Hephaestus’ golden net. Even the very dome of the sky was forged by the Finnish magician Ilmarinen.

For all aged 12 and over. Doors open at 4.15pm.

Tickets £5 for adults, £3 for young people.

Booking essential - book online or call 01453 763394

Part of the Earth Fire Iron programme

Image courtesy the Kalevala Society