Throwback Thursday – Summer Programme 2008

This is our third Throwback Thursday and this week we are looking back to our third International Training Programme which took place in June and July 2008

In summer 2008 we were joined by eighteen colleagues from nine countries: China, India, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya and South Africa.   We also added another UK Partner to our group with the addition of Manchester Museum & The Whitworth Art Gallery taking our national network to five.

New for 2008, and following requests over the last two years, the ITP blog site you’re reading now was set up to act as a forum for continued interaction between the participants, and staff from the British Museum and other participating museums.  Then it was hoped that our network would use this as a forum for sharing news of their projects, ideas and other information and I think we have managed to achieve that!!

2008 also saw the introduction of weekly Friday seminars and workshops which we still deliver today.  These sessions offer us opportunities for the programme to change and adapt to reflect current issues in the global and local museums and heritage sectors and have proved extremely popular and a great way to end the week.

Finally, something we started to have confirmed after three summer programmes, were the close and invaluable friendships fellows made within their cohort.  Although our global network was small – totally just 51 – supportive personal and professional relationships were being forged during the six-week summer programme but enduring long after our fellows returned home.  As Lydia Nafula from National Museum of Kenya said in her evaluation in 2008, ‘I have gained a network of museum professionals from around the world whom I can contact with queries on various challenges I face in the process of doing my work.  I can also look to them for inspiration on various work related issues’