Museums And Archives

Reimagining the Toy Museum at Penshurst Place and Gardens.

2025 sees the 55th anniversary of the creation of the Toy Museum at Penshurst Place. We will reimagine the Museum, creating an engaging, permanent exhibition for our target audience of families, schools and lifelong learners, and preserving our collection for future generations. We aim to become more inclusive and relevant to the public and address the educational needs of our local schools. We will update displays and interpretation, introduce interactive exhibits, and add multicultural voices to better reflect our community. We will explore stories of local games manufacturers and under-represented groups such as diverse ethnic craftspeople and women toymakers. School visits and workshops will help children engage with their heritage and support their learning objectives. We will create a more accessible space to enable more people to interact with our collections, incorporating the old with the new to allow multi-generational conversations to flow through the universal language of play.