Together with long-standing partner the British Museum, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd has today released a series of online learning resources to inspire children and young people while they are at home due to the coronavirus pandemic and during the school holidays.

Available for free on the Samsung KX website – Samsung’s home of innovation – the Around the World in a Day resources showcase some of the world’s best architecture through a range of the British Museum’s historical objects.

Each of the five resources covers a different architectural theme – towers, stadiums, palaces, spiritual spaces and homes – which children and young people are getherfortomorrow, #enainvited to use as inspiration to make their own designs and creations using drawing apps, Minecraft or any other tool of their choosing. Creations can then also be brought to life using digital devices to take photos, videos, gifs or stop frame animations, and these can be shared on social media using #MuseumFromHome and tagging @SamsungUK.

The resources link particularly strongly with the Design & Technology Curriculum and the Art & Design Curriculum, providing both an educational and creative way to explore the Museum’s collections while its doors are closed.

Forming a part of Samsung’s new Stay Learning series, which offers a range of educational content created with its CSR Partners to support children and families during this time, the Around the World in a Day resources are available now for all to enjoy here:

• Towers – https://www.samsung.com/uk/explore/kings-cross/creativity/british-museum/1/

• Stadiums – https://www.samsung.com/uk/explore/kings-cross/creativity/british-museum/2/

• Palaces – https://www.samsung.com/uk/explore/kings-cross/creativity/british-museum/3/

• Spiritual Spaces – https://www.samsung.com/uk/explore/kings-cross/creativity/british-museum/4/

• Homes – https://www.samsung.com/uk/explore/kings-cross/creativity/british-museum/5/

Jessie Soohyun Park, Head of CSR at Samsung UK, said, ‘We’re proud to continue working with the British Museum to adapt and evolve how we offer educational experiences to children and young people during these unprecedented times. As part of Samsung’s global commitment to education, we hope these resources will inspire our next generation of creators to experiment with their digital creative skills.’

Sarah Saunders, Head of Learning and National Partnerships at the British Museum said, ‘This is a great opportunity for young people to be inspired by the British Museum’s amazing collection and Samsung’s spirit of design innovation to get creative with architecture. The Museum has many fascinating objects that relate to buildings from the famous colosseum in Rome to sacred shrines in India. We can’t wait for young people to share their unique architectural creations with us.’

Also announced today is that the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre welcomed a record number of visitors this year. 28,500 children and young people took part in a wide variety of digital activities such as workshops, family drop-ins, and facilitated school visits using the latest Samsung technology – the highest annual number since the Centre opened in 2009. It was a 14% increase on the previous year.

The Virtual Visits programme will enable schools that are unable to visit the Museum, to still experience the British Museum collection and access to staff via a learning session broadcast directly into their classroom. Following successful pilots, 35,000 places over the next five years will be available for pupils from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to take part and become virtual visitors.

Virtual Visits have been created with the curriculum needs of schools in mind and is designed around the realities of classroom technology. Sessions are offered on prehistory Britain, Roman Britain and the Indus Valley, and new sessions on ancient Egypt and ancient Greece are in development. Each class will have the session tailored to their needs and pupils can enjoy direct interaction with British Museum staff, as well as high resolution digital assets such as 3D digital objects being shared with students.

Samsung and the British Museum will also begin to develop an innovative and exciting new strand of programming for teenagers, which young people themselves will help shape. By working directly with teenagers, it will help develop quality programming that fully understands and meets their diverse needs, as well as enhance their experience of the museum’s collection through Samsung technology.

The SDDC provides a state-of-the-art technological hub for children and young people to learn about and interact with the British Museum’s collection through Samsung Technology. Ahead of the refit, the SDDC welcomed its highest ever number of visitors, with 25,000 school children and families using the Centre in 2018/19. Since it opened, 150,000 people have visited the space to take part in a wide variety of activities such as workshops, family drop-ins, and facilitated school visits. This major refit revealed today sees improvements to the user experience to cater for the growing number of visitors, as well as a full upgrade in the Samsung technology available. This will include the Samsung Flip, E-boards and the latest range of Galaxy Smartphones, tablets and smartwatches.

Over the past 10 years, the SDDC has provided the largest programme of digital learning activities in any UK museum. It continues to demonstrate the highest levels of audience satisfaction, with 95% of families surveyed in 2017–18 stating they found the sessions ‘good’ or ‘very good’, and that 96% of teachers said they would recommend the SDDC to a colleague and would bring a student group to the SDDC again. Thanks to Samsung’s support, expertise and technology, the SDDC schools and family programmes have transformed the Museum’s digital learning provision into a world class, sector leading and award-winning programme.

Francis Chun, President & CEO of Samsung Electronics UK & Ireland says: “At Samsung, under our global Corporate Citizenship vision of Enabling People and supporting education for future generations, we’re committed to empowering the next generation of innovators to discover and unlocking their full potential. Our collaboration with the British Museum for the past ten years has allowed us to constantly trial new technologies that engage children and young people in innovative ways to not only help them learn about lessons in history, but enable them to better understand the present and prepare for the future. By extending this long-standing partnership for a further five years to 2024, we stand beside the British Museum as we together navigate the ways in which emerging technologies can further enhance the way we learn.”

Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum, says: “We are delighted that thanks to the generous support of Samsung, we can now offer 35,000 school children over the next five years the opportunity to interact with the world class collection and expertise of the British Museum, who ordinarily might not be able to. Pupils from Andover to Aberdeen and Brecon to Belfast can now experience some of the Museum’s incredible treasures from their own classroom, potentially sparking a lifelong curiosity in the history of the world. The advances in digital technology have enhanced the learning opportunities within – and now outside – the Museum, and the SDDC has been at the very forefront of our efforts to share the collection more widely. We are grateful for the longstanding and continued partnership with Samsung for making it possible.”

For more information about the British Museum Samsung Digital Design Centre: https://www.britishmuseum.org/learning/samsung_centre.aspx