Ruhr Valley with your class
Groups explore the UNESCO-listed Zollverein colliery in Essen, marvel at giant art installations inside the Gasometer in Oberhausen, and experience the Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord — a disused ironworks turned urban adventure playground. It is a journey through industrial history, urban regeneration and contemporary art that suits creative, curious secondary groups.
The Ruhr is compact and easy to navigate, with excellent public transport between sites. On the Move manages the programme, accommodation and transport throughout.
Trip highlights
The UNESCO-listed Zollverein colliery complex in Essen is part industrial cathedral, part design museum. Groups tour the former coking plant — a world-class cultural venue — and explore a powerful exhibition on coal, steel and the industrial revolution that shaped modern Europe.
The 117-metre Gasometer is one of Europe's largest industrial structures — and one of its most unexpected art spaces. A changing installation fills the full interior: students stand inside a work of art at a scale that is simply impossible anywhere else.
A disused ironworks turned urban adventure playground: climbing walls on blast furnaces, a diving pool in a former gasometer, a rope course through decommissioned industrial structures. Landschaftspark makes the case that industrial heritage and outdoor adventure are the same thing.
The Ruhr was Europe's greatest industrial region; today it leads Europe's most ambitious post-industrial regeneration. Groups explore how cities reinvent themselves — the planning, the culture strategy, the community — and bring the geography curriculum to life in a landscape that is itself the lesson.
Curriculum links
In pictures
Discovery Classes - your questions
Popular themes include space and aerospace, zoology, natural sciences, industrial heritage and urban regeneration, and technology. We tailor each itinerary to your subject and year group.
Yes. We arrange guided, expert-led visits and hands-on workshops at science centres, museums and research sites wherever possible.
Münster (Zoo School, planetarium) is designed for P5 (ages 10–11). Our other discovery destinations suit secondary years with content adapted to the group's level.
Return travel, accommodation, all entries and workshops, supervision, insurance and your On the Move coordinator.