slides of wildlife dating from more than 100 years ago are forming part of a new project involving children at an Okehampton museum. The Museum of Dartmoor Life is joining The Wild Escape, a major new project uniting hundreds of museums with schools and families to find nature in museums.

Led by national art charity Art Fund with Arts Council England, hundreds of museums, galleries and historic houses are inviting children to look at nature in their local museum and create an artwork.

The pictures and stories children create will be brought together in a collective work of art that imagines a better future for the wildlife on our doorstep, launched online and in museums on Earth Day 2023.

As part of The Wild Escape, the Museum of Dartmoor Life will be looking at a collection of microscope slides of nature donated to the museum in the 1980s. They were made by Chagford-born Gordon Parsons around the 1930s and a recent visit to Exeter University’s science labs at Penryn near Falmouth has revealed their contents.

The Wild Escape is inspired by Wild Isles, a new BBC series exploring the flora and fauna of the UK.

Manager and curator Kristy Turner, said: ‘This is a fantastic opportunity to share with our visitors and local schools, a piece of our collection that shows us how people 100 years ago viewed nature and its protection, and then compare it with today.

‘We want to invite children to look at how amazing nature is under the microscope and inspire them to produce artworks based on what they see. Check our website www.dartmoorlife.org.uk for more details.’ The museum reopens for 2023 on March 27.

Pictured are one of Gordon Parsons’ slides, a close up of a beetle’s foot, and Yasmin Brain of Exeter University examining one of the slides.