Community engagement at Malindi Museum (Doris Kamuye, Kenya, ITP 2024)

Written by Doris Kamuye, Curator, Malindi Museum, National Museums of Kenya (Kenya, ITP 2024)

Appreciating heritage with children, in line with our motto “National Museums of Kenya, where Heritage Lives on”.

As a 2024 ITP participant keen on putting skills acquired to practical use, I presented to colleagues and supporters my experiences at UK museums to build capacity and interest in transforming Malindi Museum’s visitor offering. One of my goals is to engage communities and build sustainable connections with audiences at our museum, to share what we have on display and stimulate informed conversations on how to inclusively improve the museum, especially considering the museum is situated in a multicultural community, popular as a tourist resort.

An idea came up to engage a selected group of school children in an edutainment fun day at the museum, a day in which children were immersed in thrilling cultural activities.

A partnership with local media channel, Kings Media, on a project called The Big Dream, a learning oriented programme, sufficed. We settled on working with 7 schools within Malindi sub county, and each school selected at most 50 participants, bringing together a diverse but manageable group of approximately 450 learners and teachers. Our fun day was held on Saturday 21 September 2024; the day starting with the arrival of curious learners on an adventure not only to explore what Malindi Museum had to offer, but to showcase their talents at interpreting and applying cultural knowledge.

 Museum staff provided guided tours working with school teachers to create spontaneous interactive activities. The programme engaged participants in a way to connect cultural education with games, to nurture talent and encourage critical and creative thinking.  Children learnt how to solve complex problems, literacy, decision making, team work, and built self-confidence and communication as basic life skills.

One of the activities was to use recycled materials to create clothing and cultural attires. Materials included shopping bags, packaging and newspapers.

Some of the other activities included:

• Writing poems on proper waste disposal to keep our environment habitable for humans and the ocean safe for marine life.
• Story telling, a book on the Gems of Arabuko Sokoke Forest was read by a child. The forest, located in Malindi, is a popular ecosystem support resource for its neighboring community. This created awareness among children on the role of forests in their daily life, its endangered animals, diverse birds, animas and butterfly species and the importance of conserving it.
• Display of Malindi’s diverse cultures and religions through cultural dress and religious recitals.
• Exploring the cultural galleries on display at the Museum to encourage intercultural understanding.
• Spelling competitions, spelling names of cultural objects in the galleries.
• Learning about intergovernmental support through the exhibition ’60 Years of Friendship’ between Kenya and Germany.

Participants experienced a thrilling cultural immersion through gallery spaces showcasing the rich and varied coastal cultural display. The temporary exhibition was given a special highlight as participants were engaged in gallery interpretation, finding thematic areas of collaboration in the friendship between Germany and Kenya and completing crossword puzzles generated from the exhibition.

This not only encouraged careful interactive study of the exhibition but also critical thinking on how productive collaborations can be.

This participatory approach to sharing cultural knowledge with children in a museum setting was greatly embraced by teachers because it is very much in tune with the current system of learning in our schools: the competence based curriculum. Museum spaces have a role to play in imparting skills and providing culturally fascinating experiences at all levels of growing up!