Principia Museum and the school ‘Green week’
Written by Ciprian Dobra, Alba Ilulia Municipality Counselor and Cultural Objective Curator, Principia Museum (Romania, ITP 2019, Senior Fellow 2023)
For the last few years the Ministry of Education in Romania decreed that twice a year the schools in our country should dedicate a week for activities that are beyond the curriculum, to take advantage of the possible opportunities to broaden the perspective of the students, to take them out of their school bubble and make them see the world differently and, at the same time, to participate or at least to learn how to participate later in a responsible manner to the growth of the society they will be part of in the future. These two weeks are the ‘Different week’ and the ‘Green week’.
In the same time, in 2022, our coordinator, the Municipality of Alba Iulia, allocated some funds for the materials necessary to develop a series of interactive workshops that could enhance the offer of the Principia Museum by bringing the audience back in time to experience some techniques and trades that are no longer in use but still functional. Therefore, our first step, after having some infrastructure ready, was to advertise the existence of these workshops to the local educational institutions, with little positive response, however.
Lucky for us, because every week we have one workshop available for free, pupils and students, families and individuals visited and experienced our ancient workshops, learning how the Romans were writing; making and wearing armours; minting coins; making leather and textile products and so on. So, people from other parts of Romania visited us by chance and they spread the word. One teacher said something to other teachers, they posted the experience on social media and the schools from Alba Iulia became aware of these workshops as well. So, the requests for workshops started appearing.
This year, the ‘Green week’ was between April 22nd and 26th but it continued into the weekend. For the first time, we were asked for appointments from so many educational institutions that we had a problem fitting them in. For a small museum such as ours, 350 pupils, in small groups, for 45 minutes, every day from 9 to 5, was a challenging task – but we were ready. We had our speeches done, we had our workshops ready according to the scheduled appointments and we were waiting for the experience as well. There was something to learn from this even for us.
So, the ‘Green week’ began. The audience’s favourite workshop was the ancient writing one. Very green, with only natural ingredients for the ink and writing tools or supports, and we did not lose the opportunity to raise the necessary awareness about climate change and pollution. The first day was great but an additional challenge appeared: there were groups that wanted to visit and attend the workshops without an appointment. We could not refuse them, they were children, and we do everything for them, even more for those who made the effort to come from far away.
Thus, although we had a class inside the museum, we accepted others. Because it is a small museum, two people cannot present at the same time without disturbing the other, and we had to maintain order because there are parts of the Roman site inside our museum that must not be stepped on or damaged. Whilst one of us was speaking, the other was handing around replicas of the ancient objects, recovering them, putting them back on the presentation tables and supervising the activities; cutting papyrus, preparing the ink, erasing the wax tablets and so on. Therefore, there were no breaks from the first to the last group, no time to eat lunch or have a quick snack, we barely had time to sip some water or cold coffee! There were moments when I had to speak and adapt my speech to 3 different classes at the same time: 8th graders, 5th graders and 1st graders. It was quite a stretch, and it went on for the first 5 days of that week.
But we prevailed and the feedback was amazing. One of the classes, coming all the way from Bucharest, 365 km away, wanted to stay for the entire afternoon, asking so many decent questions, helping us with the smaller kids, it was amazing.
It was only now that we learned that the schools have the possibility to choose the date for their own Green or Different week and we agreed that before they decide, if they want to visit us again, they should look for the proper activities and available spaces and then communicate the dates to the directors and parents, so we and them can avoid such congestions.
In the end, instead of the 350 people scheduled we presented the workshops to 1345 people. I lost 4 kg during that week (a welcome fact), we met and gained new connections, we had amazing feedback and advertising. We taught and learned a lot and we are now ready for the ‘Different week’ whenever that will be decided.