Halima Khanom is Community Engagement Officer
at Royal Parks (organising bat walks are a part of her job description!)
but was working in the National and International Learning and Engagement
team at Imperial War Museum when she started a Transformers project to explore this international learning.
Halima coordinated a project called Make Film Make History, in which young
people aged 18 – 25 from UK, Denmark and Germany created films in response to
the Battle of the Somme film. The idea was that this audience would bring not
only younger, but also more international perspectives, to outputs.
While attending residential workshops in
Denmark with young people and museum professionals from the three countries, Halima
reflected just how very different the delivery of cultural learning can be.
Halima’s top tips for delivering international cultural learning projects...
A lot of these tips will ring true for any museum learning projects, but are even more essential in the complicated world of museum learning projects across borders. When you have the adding pressures (which in their own right can be the benefits!) of translating between cultures, work practices and language barriers, these tips might come in handy.
1. Do
your homework
The best sort of homework for starting an
international learning project is to find someone who has done it before. A lot of international working at the moment still focuses on touring exhibitions or
collection loans, so museum learning projects operating internationally are still relatively new territory. That being said, there are some fantastic examples in
Brighton and Hove Museum World
Stories Project and Luton Cultures Truck Art Project.
2. Map
your international links
Go through your existing international links.
You might think you don't have any, but try the local university, see if there have
been any objects loaned abroad through your curators, and build a project
through these links rather than building from scratch. More here
3. Challenge
your assumptions
"But its best practice in the UK to..." might
not translate in the new cultural context which your project operates in.
Invite your international delivery partner to explain how they might deliver a
workshop, explore a cultural topic etc you might learn a new trick or two.
4. Flexibility,
flexibility, flexibility
Youth engagement projects have to be flexible
at the best of times, but even more so when collaborating with international
partners. Don’t be disheartened if time frames lag, and things don’t go exactly
as you had planned.
5. Shall
we go Digital?
Think carefully about whether digital
elements in the project can enhance face to face contact. At times, we
overestimate how much digital can do for us, but Google hangout, digitised
collections and dialogue cafes do have their perks in supporting museum
learning across borders. More here
6. Memorandum
of understanding
Be very clear of what you and your
international delivery partner are doing, and what joint project goals you are
working towards. It is hard enough being on the same page when you are
collaborating with colleagues in the same country, and using the same language,
but ever more critical to understand each other when working across borders.
For more inspiration here is another great example of an international learning project from Opera Circus
