COUNCIL bosses want more children to use museums in a bid to "change young lives."

A new booklet from Lancashire Museum Education Service hopes to inspire more to visit castles, textile mills and country houses.

The Simply Schools for teachers focuses on 12 centres and publishes new ideas to enhance the national curriculum.

It also takes teachers through a museum's core subject potential and suggests learning sessions at exhibitions and events.

Head of Learning and Access, David Chadwick, said that "treasure houses of knowledge" were better than classrooms for inspiring creativity.

Museum learning sessions, along with loans to schools, means the service already reaches 75,000 Lancashire pupils each year.

And research by Museums, Libraries and Archives North West revealed schools that visited museums performed better than those that didn't, as well as hailed Simply Schools as best regional project.