'Butterflies Through Time'

workshops and resources for Museum of Zoology, Cambridge

After being given the wonderful opportunity to work with University of Cambridge Museums in 2021 on their ‘Inspire Nature’ project, I was so pleased to be contacted by the Museum of Zoology to work with them again on their ‘Butterflies Through Time’ exhibition.

As someone who would never harm or collect butterflies I often feel unsure about how to relate to these historic collections, but this exhibition explores 'Using wildlife of the past to guide conservation of the future.'

As the museum writes 'This exhibition will use UK butterfly specimens from our collections to showcase the natural world and environmental change. It highlights the research that conservationists today are undertaking to reverse long-term declines, including people based here in the Museum.

Historical museum specimens allow us to see which animals were living in different environments hundreds of years ago, and compare them with those that are still around today. In this way, they can act like time-machines and show us how much things have changed. This helps us understand what has been lost, but can also build an appreciation for the wildlife that remains.

On the pillars across the Museum, the exhibition will highlight 13 local butterfly species which have experienced change over the last 200 years, as well as the modern-day researchers working to study and protect them.'

For this project I illustrated 9 butterfly species and their lifecycles on factsheets such as the ones below, created a series of short art tutorials and helped to prepare a beautiful display of illustrations by the children showing butterfly lifecycles in the wild.

Watch the intro video below:

Find the complete set of video tutorials sharing how to illustrate butterflies and their lifecycles using the button below.