ITP Futures day two: Hayk Mkrtchyan (Armenia, ITP Senior Fellow 2017)

On 11th of June, the British Museum’s International Training Programme (ITP) initiated a series of discussions and meetings aimed at understanding the perspectives and future for ITP in the coming years. After almost a year of virtual discussions Senior Fellows from Egypt, Kenya, India, and Armenia are back to the British Museum.

The ITP Futures 2022 gathered Senior Fellows from different years to run these discussions and construct a new basement for the future of the programme. One of the most exciting projects which will be announced soon is the establishment of the British Museum’s ITP Advisory Board/Panel/Group/Council. We have already shared ideas about the expectations, outputs, and management of the board. However, on Tuesday, 14th of June, the ITP Team arranged a nice discussion on how advisory boards are functioning within different institutions. We had a great discussion with Sian Hoggett, the Head of the British Museum Friends Advisory Council, Ashley Almeida, Programme Manager for Youth Collective (The BM), and Rudi Schmidt, Youth Engagement Coordinator at the Horniman.

Despite of room-based discussions we had unique opportunity to visit the recent exhibitions at the British Museum accompanied by curators of these exhibitions. On Tuesday morning Belinda Crerar toured us through an amazing exhibition titled “Feminine Power: the divine to the demonic”. The exhibition is unique and tries to underline the significant role and influence of females as spiritual beings within global religion and faith. Being organised around 5 themes it bring together various arts and artefacts across 6 continents. Alongside bronze age statutes, one can also see works of contemporary artists expressing their view about the female power.

In the end of the second working day in the British Museum we were privileged to be guided through the exhibition “The World of Stonehenge” with Jennifer Wexler. The exhibition consists of more than 1500 objects both from the British Museum as well as loans from different museums across the Europe. The exhibition was combined with technological solutions which made it more interactive and exciting.

So, as you see we kicked off quite actively and Tuesday was full of events, discussions, and visits…

Stay tuned and wait for another exciting stories from my colleagues during the week.