Kimmeridge Bay Tour Dates with Steve Etches for Autumn/Winter 2020 are now LIVE!!!!

Your chance to accompany Steve Etches down to Kimmeridge Bay to learn all about the geological and palaeontological importance and history of Kimmeridge, explore the fossil ledges as well as understand safe fossil collecting and conservation.

Dates as follows:-

Sunday 9th February 12.45pm
Sunday 23rd February 12.45pm

Adults £15, Children 5-16 £8, Family Ticket 2 adults 2 children £38. No under 5's due to the health and safety requirements of the tour.

Contact us on 01929 270000 to book your place.

Job Opportunity at The Etches Collection!

Morning Cleaner required to join our enthusiastic, experienced cleaning team at our newly built museum in the village of Kimmeridge Dorset BH20 5PE

Working 7 hours a week over 5 days at £10 per hour, on a 6-month rolling contract to include weekends with Immediate Start

Please send your CV and a covering letter detailing your experience, along with the contact details of two referees to info@theetchescollection.org
Or post to The Etches Collection, Museum of Jurassic Marine Life, Kimmeridge, Dorset BH20 5PE

For any informal questions please call 01929 270000 and ask for Karen Kidby

A BIG thank you to the Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society!!

Huge thanks to the Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society for inviting the team here at The Etches Collection to have a stand at their fabulous annual Hampshire Mineral and Fossil Show at Lyndhurst on Sunday 7th September.

We had a wonderful day, engaging with all of the visitors - the show gives us an opportunity to meet people who may not have heard of our museum before and enables them to speak with us and find out all about our amazing collection of Kimmeridgian fossil specimens, our mission to educate and inspire everyone who comes to see us and experience our immersive exhibition displays and be able to see Steve Etches at work on his latest finds from the Kimmeridge locality.

As an independent and charitable trust, the museum is always seeking ways to ensure that we continue our work as custodians for the collection and maintain our sustainability for future generations and the event allowed us to bring some unique fossils and minerals available for purchase - these specimens were very kindly donated to us to assist with our fundraising and we had a very successful day.

You can find out more about the Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society here.

If you would like to support The Etches Collection then please visit our page on the National Funding Scheme here.

A Fabulously Fantastic Fossil Fun Day!!

The Etches Collection held its 2nd annual Fossil Fun Day on Saturday 17th August 2019. A fun time was had by all - we were blessed with beautiful sunshine and our visitors were able to engage with lots of exciting hands on activities, meet Steve Etches as well our special guests, the University of Southampton and the team from Dinosaur Isle museum on the Isle of Wight. Face painting, tea and cake, BBQ and ice cream, a raffle with amazing prizes, and fun all round was the order of the day. A big thank you to all of our guests and visitors in making it a successful ‘fabulously fantastic fossil filled’ event - we look forward to our next annual Fossil Fun Day in 2020!

PalaeoGo!! Virtual Dinosaurs & Marine Reptiles have arrived at The Etches Collection!

Our amazing new ‘augmented reality’ app enables you to ‘dig deep’ and answer educational questions on the fossils here at The Etches Collection and unlock virtual dinosaurs and marine reptiles and see them in fantastical 3D through the IPad viewfinder above their fossil bones in our Museum gallery. You can also have a ‘selfie’ taken with your new found prehistoric friends! Suitable for children and adults alike!

PalaeoGo! is a project funded by Bournemouth University (BU) via its Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) that aims to show how augmented reality (AR) can be used as an educational tool at natural history museums, national parks and in any open space or landscape.

If you’d like to try the app for yourself during your visit to the museum, you can ask to borrow one of our Ipads at the front desk or download the app yourself to your smartphone device.

An fabulous way to engage, understand and learn all about life here at Kimmeridge during Jurassic times!

Etches Collection receives grant from The Geologists Association Curry Fund

The Etches Collection are pleased to announce that the Geologists Association Curry Fund have awarded the museum a grant of £2450 to allow us to purchase mobile display boards and room dividers to enhance our Clore Learning Room. This grant will now enable us to divide the room into smaller spaces for use as classrooms, activity areas and pop up exhibition spaces but also be able to use the boards as displays for artwork and creative activities from our visiting schools, educational groups as well as display posters and photo imagery for conferences, talks and lectures.

We also plan to use these boards to enhance the visitor experience and provide visual displays on Steve Etches’ latest discoveries and create themed visual displays on specific topics surrounding the fossils within the reserve collection, geology and evolution, comparisons of life in Kimmeridge’s Jurassic seas to todays oceans, cleaning and conservation of fossils, Kimmeridge - its archaeology and mining history and much, much more.

We very much look forward to bringing you our updates once the boards are in place and the exciting displays which will follow.

Our grateful thanks to The Curry Fund!!

The Etches Collection awarded Accredited Museum status!

We are extremely proud and excited to announce that the Etches Collection is now an Accredited Museum! We received our award from the Arts Council of England last week. Big thanks goes out to our amazing team for working so hard in achieving this prestigious status - this now means that we are officially recognised for all that we do to conserve, develop and expand our amazing and unique fossil collection for future generations.

Steve Etches joins actor and 'Trees A Crowd' host David Oakes in a brand new podcast!

We were thrilled when local actor David Oakes wanted to pop down and interview Steve for his new venture, ‘Trees A Crowd’, a website dedicated to podcasts with inspirational people that have an affinity with or have spent their lives working with and amongst the natural world.

Its a fantastic interview - to listen to the podcast please follow the link here.

Easter Activities at The Etches Collection!!

Apprentice of the Year Award!!!

Huge congratulations to our office administration assistant Melanie Welsh who fought off fierce competition to win the Weymouth College ‘Apprentice of the Year’ award 2019 for Business and Administration. We are so proud of you, Mel!

Brand New 'Plesiosaur' Exhibit at The Etches Collection

Be sure to pop in and see our brand new Plesiosaur exhibit - a specimen of Colymbosaurus Sp, this amazing fossil skeleton is the only one to have its lower jaw and teeth preserved. Kindly donated to us, Steve Etches has been busy cleaning the specimen and preparing it for display over the past few months. See it in our main exhibition gallery….

New Geological Display in our Education Room

Huge thanks to Henk Kombrink for this wonderful North Sea Core which is a fabulous addition to our Wolfson Educational Classroom. Be sure to come and take a look when you visit The Etches Collection!