Risk Assessments | Travel | Access | Sustainable lunches | Interactive galleries

We recommend that teachers arrange a preliminary visit to plan practical details and to assist in briefing your group leaders and pupils before they arrive.

The National Maritime Museum is a very large site. Adequate time should be planned for your journey to and movement around the site when booking your itinerary.

Unless specified, sessions are free and available Monday to Friday.

Please note: photography is permitted during teaching sessions only.

Risk assessments for school visits

Download Risk Assessments:

• Risk Assessment for schools groups visiting the National Maritime Museum and Queen’s House (Word, 43KB)
• Risk Assessment for schools groups visiting the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (Word, 46KB)

Travelling to the Museum

Find out how to get to the Museum.      

Admission to all sites at the National Maritime Museum is free.

Access for all

The National Maritime Museum is committed to developing its educational programme and collections for everyone to enjoy. Most educational sessions involve handling objects and can be adapted for students with special educational needs, please check when you book.

The Museum can offer the following to support your visit, by prior arrangement:

• manual wheelchairs
• portable loop system
• raised drawings
• museum guides in large print
• museum guides suitable for those with reading difficulties and for whom English is not their first language
• a list of touchable objects within our galleries

Please note: the majority of the Royal Observatory has full wheelchair access, with the exceptions of the 28" telescope, the Octagon room and the Time & Society gallery. Find out more about disabled access.

Sustainable lunches

The National Maritime Museum encourages its visitors to act in a sustainable way to ensure a positive future for all, and supports the aims of the UK Government to make all schools fully sustainable by 2020.

We can all act locally to make a difference globally. Even one change can make a difference such as the method of transport you choose to make your journey to the Museum, the contents of your packed lunch and the way you dispose of any waste.

Why not bring a sustainable lunch on your school visit to the Museum? Here are some things to think about:

• Where has the lunch and its contents been grown or produced? Is it local or has it come from overseas?
• Has the lunch and its contents been sourced from a fair-trade producer?
• Is the food organic or non-organic?
• In choosing items to include in the lunch, what waste products will we be left with? Are they biodegradable, can they be recycled or will they have to be put into a landfill?

Pack your sustainable lunch into a reusable lunch container, so there is no need to use cling-film or tin-foil. Bring a drink in a reusable drink bottle.

The Schools Food Trust, the Food Standards Agency and the London Sustainable Schools Forum have further information about healthy, sustainable packed lunches and sustainable food.

Interactive galleries

Kids in the All Hands gallery. 

Book a session in one of these exciting cross-curricular hands-on galleries to accompany your visit. Send a signal, go deep-sea diving, fire a cannon or steer a ship into port. Find out more