The exhibition includes a number of interactive features such as touch screens and jenga style block games. Picture courtesy The Beacon

The Beacon’s Harbour Gallery in Whitehaven will be the first to host the touring exhibition Your Ocean, which starts on November 24 and runs until January 19 2008. It hopes to encourage visitors to think about how we are connected to the sea and how the ocean can affect our lifestyle and our actions, as well as the importance of sustaining it for the future of our planet.

The exhibition began its life as a permanent gallery within the National Maritime Museum as part of the Museum’s Planet Ocean Initiative, and is now being taken around the country, starting in the beautiful coastal area of Cumbria.

Your Ocean welcomes visitors of all ages and is very child friendly, exploring the themes of: energy, climate, pollution, everyday goods and foodstuffs, through a variety of interactive displays, and incorporates tips on how to be more ‘green’.

A display about our climate featuring items to look at and issues to explore. Picture courtesy The Beacon.

A main interactive feature is a touch screen piece which focuses on oil spills and how we deal with the impact of them and the problems they cause. There is also a giant block game similar to Jenga, which revolves around the idea of climate change. When the blocks containing information on them are removed, the structure becomes more and more unstable, resembling the negative effect of climate change on the world we live in.

The exhibition aims to be thought provoking and fun as well as challenging the public’s current views, and asking how we can help save our ocean and reduce the effects of climate change by taking action in our everyday lives.

“We hope this exhibition will really help people to understand just how reliant we are on our oceans,” explained the Beacon’s Curator, Michelle Kelly. “We need to think more carefully about what we are putting into the sea and how we make use of the products the sea provides.”

Display cabinet at the Gallery made from recycled materials to promote being 'green'. Picture courtesy The Beacon.

Keeping to the theme of being ‘green’, the exhibition itself also tries to be as sustainable as possible, using recycled materials such as yoghurt pots wherever possible.

Your Ocean has been produced by The National Maritime Museum in association with a number of organisations including: Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Southampton Institute, Southampton Oceanography Centre, Surfers Against Sewage, the Maritime Conservation Society and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Purpose built in the shape of a lighthouse in 1996 as part of a redevelopment programme in the area, The Beacon is home to Copeland Borough Council’s museum collection housing a wealth of information including facts about its maritime past. The Beacon’s Harbour Gallery reopened at the beginning of October this year after a £2.2 million redevelopment, and Your Ocean will be its second exhibition.

The exhibition is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am – 4.30pm, and entry to the Gallery is free.