Mariem Danial, Coptic Museum, Egypt and Zulkifli bin Ishak, Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia: Final Day of the 2017 Summer Programme

Mariem Danial, Curator Coptic Museum, Egypt and Zulkifli bin Ishak, Curator, Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia

I, Zul, will stay two weeks after the programme finishes, working with the Middle East department. The last of the ITP was a rainy day, as if London wants to say goodbye, but we had special group sessions.

In the morning, we both were scheduled to attend a special session regarding Health & Wellbeing, presented by Harvinder Bahra, Community Partnerships Manager. This session highlighted the importance of museums to engage and sustain relationships with local communities. Among issues raised in the session included how to improve visitors’ experiences during their visit in order for them to feel connected and relevant to the museum. The session allowed the group to discuss and give opinions, as well as to exchange personal experiences regarding museum engagement activities. This session is “All about people”, why museums care about people and engage with local communities. How to engage? What are the barriers which prevent people from coming to the Museum and how can the Museum team try to solve and remove those barriers.

In the afternoon, Zulkifli was assigned to join a session with Dudley Hubbard, Senior Photographer and Mariem to attend a session Visitor Insights with Casey Scott-Songin. In the session Photography & Imaging in the WCEC Photographic Studios, the group learnt different techniques of photographing objects and artefacts. This interesting session gave valuable knowledge on photography for different purposes in the context of the museum such as for publications, posters, catalogues and others.

For me, Mariem, the final day was all about connecting people – can evaluations be done to know our audience more?  What visitor insights can be learnt?  How to apply these strategies in our museums back home?