A new week! Today is about learning (Kang Mengjie, China, ITP 2024)

Written by Kang Mengjie, Assistant Research Fellow, Foreign Collection Department, National Museum of China (China, ITP 2024)

Today is about sharing museum learning practices. I always find learning at the museum interesting. We were in the Sloane Room, the room where we gave our presentations on our second day at the British Museum. That day was so stressful, but today is the start of our second week in London, and I feel much more relaxed and integrated into ITP life.

Although it wasn’t me who wrote the blog about the free day yesterday, I really wanted to say a few words. I’m still immersed in the feelings of yesterday because we went to the Natural History Museum. I can only use ‘amazing’ to describe my mood!

I saw the blog written by Abdulrhman, who also went to the Natural History Museum yesterday. It is such a coincidence！It seems that everyone’s interests are quite similar. It was also great to come to the British Museum early this morning and enjoy the Ancient Greece and Rome Gallery without visitors.

Well, back to learning. I think that education plays an important role in museums. I don’t work in the education department, so I’m curious about what knowledge children can learn from museums. Why do people come to the museum? What do museum educators want their audience to learn from them? With the increasing demand for museums, it is also a challenge to the education sector. What kind of programmes need to be developed for different groups of people? This morning we experienced a ‘Programming Elevator Pitch’ group activity, which was very interesting as everyone had their own ideas on how to make a cultural relic more attractive to the audience, so as to play an educational role rather than describing it in large paragraphs of boring words.

The afternoon was even more interesting, and we enjoyed experiencing education programmes aimed for SEN, with learning ‘hands-on’ about the production process of mummies and the materials that were used.

I was wondering, during the Little Feet session, what under 5s can learn when coming to the museum. In my traditional thinking, young children don’t understand what a museum is, and they can’t understand these cultural relics! So why do museum educators create programmes for children’s education? I think I already have the answer. Most parents are busy with work or housework, and appreciate inspiration to develop their children’s potential. Before the age of 5, children’s brains have unlimited possibilities and can quickly process new information, which is of great help to their creative thinking in the future. So, I think this is more of a learning programme formulated for parents. This is my understanding. I don’t know if it’s correct. This has inspired me in the direction of educating children in the future.

I have to stop writing now because we’re going to Oxford tomorrow. I might be too excited to sleep, but I must get enough rest as I want to fully enjoy the trip of tomorrow. Let’s look forward to Tatiana sharing her blog tomorrow. Tatiana Quevedo Mogollon works as Communities, Accessibility and Inclusion Program Coordinator for Museo Nacional de Colombia. She will tell us about her experiences in Oxford.