Looking Back at Our Second Series of ITP Online Sessions

Written by George Peckham, ITP Assistant

This week we had our final ITP Online Subject Specialist Session of this series. From February to July 2021 we have hosted 12 online sessions to complete our second series of online events for the ITP global network.

In October 2020, the ITP launched its first series of online events, in order to continue to share knowledge, skills and experiences with our global network. We had an excellent programme of 12 online sessions, given by ITP fellows, British Museum staff and network partners. Recordings of these sessions, along with other useful resources, can be found on the ITP blogsite by entering the Course Resources page.

In February 2021, ITP online sessions returned with 12 new events hosted every 2 weeks. We have had some fascinating sessions hosted by brilliant speakers:

• The Money and Medals Network: Promoting best practice in numismatic storage and display, with Henry Flynn, Money and Medals Network Curator, British Museum
• Museum Education in Egypt During COVID-19, with Shreen Amin, Director, The Children’s Museum, Egyptian Museum, Cairo (ITP Fellow 2016)
• Skill Sharing Workshop: Museum Visitor Trails, with Anna Garnett, Curator, Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology
• Missionaries and Mennonites in the Paraguayan Chaco: 100 Histories of 100 Worlds, with Laura Osario Sunnucks, Project Curator: Santo Domingo Centre, British Museum
• The Silk Road Then and Now: The UNESCO Silk Road Expeditions in the 1990s and their impact and legacy today, with Helen Wang, Curator, British Museum
• Linked Open Data in Museums and Archaeology: The Example of Amara West, with Manuela Lehmann, Project Curator: Amara West, British Museum
• Collecting Around COVID-19, with Patricia Allan, Curator of World Cultures and Isobel McDonald, Curator of Social History, Glasgow Museums
• The Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP), with Paula Granados Garcia, Project Curator: EMKP, British Museum, Nik Petek-Sargeant, Project Curator: EMKP, British Museum and Jacob Nii Marley, Technical Assistant, Department of Archaeology & Heritage Studies, Leventis Digital Resource Centre for African Studies, University of Ghana (Ghana, ITP Fellow 2019)
• International Touring Exhibitions: a curator’s view on content development, with Marie Vandenbeusch, Project Curator: Egyptian Touring Exhibitions, British Museum
• Preserving, documenting and ‘unlocking’ sound archive recordings, with Donal McAnallen, Project Manager: Unlocking Our Sound Heritage, National Museums Northern Ireland
• Digital exhibitions and engagement: developing interpretive content during the pandemic, with Karen Logan, Senior Curator of History, National Museums Northern Ireland
• Telling stories, a new exhibition of Middle East art from the collection of the British Museum, with Venetia Porter, Curator: Islamic and Contemporary Middle East Art, British Museum

Across these 12 sessions we had a total of 177 attendees. 76 members of the ITP global network attended at least one session including 59 ITP fellows from 29 different countries. We were very happy to see ITP alumni attend these sessions from every year of the ITP summer programme (2006-2019). We also welcomed 10 members of British Museum staff and 7 UK Partner Museum staff members to these events.

We would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to attend one of our online events this year. We also say a huge thank you to all the amazing speakers who have delivered brilliant online sessions. We have enjoyed some fascinating presentations and listened to some very insightful discussions amongst our global network.

We hope everyone has enjoyed these online sessions and found them enjoyable, interesting and useful. It’s been wonderful to keep connected with our global network remotely and continue to share knowledge, skills and experiences.

Our online sessions will return and remain a constant part of our the ITP calendar.

The recordings of these sessions will be made available on our Course Resources page in due course. Please stay tuned for updates on this.