ITP Manchester report Waed Awesat Palestine My first amazing meeting with Manchester was on 13th November, through our remarkable tour guide Jonathan Schofield. The next morning, 14th November, we started our tour in the company of Ronan Brindley, Head of Learning at Manchester Art Gallery. We met in the entrance by Spiderman s sculpture, who motivated me to see the rest of the galleries and exhibitions (it s not only children who love that!). Our tour started with Risham Syed s exhibition, who based a series of her paintings on Manchester City Art Gallery. We then moved on to Hetain Patel s film The Jump which presented the Superhero talking about an Indian family who emigrated to the UK.
We then experienced Mehreen Murtaza s exhibition which focussed on how will you conduct yourself in the company of trees. Take a walk and explore a garden where you can hear plants sing.. Our next tour and discussion, with Adam Jaffer in People s History Museum, was interesting. For me, one of the special parts was to see what s happening behind the scenes in the conservation rooms. Also, another special thing was being a part of this team in this place, because our exchange and sharing opinions after each exhibition or anything we see, was mind blowing for me. The next morning, Wednesday 15th November, we visited Manchester Museum. It was my first time visiting there and a real excitement. By chance we happily attended one of the educational tours in the museum delivered by Campbell Price, Head of Egypt and Sudan. The event was for school children which is one of my favourite parts of museum work because I worked in 2015 with the same age level at Birzeit University Museum. I was really impressed how the students lived the history of the object in the activity they did and how they represented history using modern technology.
We even had the opportunity to see Celebrating Ganesha which was on display at Manchester Museum. Then we moved to explore the galleries with this lovely team, with who we can enjoy and learn at the same time, like taking a selfie with a dinosaur! And we continued our exploration with Campbell to the mummies store and some of their discoveries like the mummified flower, which is the oldest flower I have encountered in my life!!
On Thursday 16th November, our first day in the MA conference, I was full of energy, curiosity and hope to gain as much as I could. We attended various talks about different subjects. The first workshop was about how to network naturally, talking about the role of networkers, how to think/feel/say and how to network effectively, which is one of the most important parts in museums associations. The second session was on youth participation, where they discussed how organisations may change with youth participation. The next talk was about growing support for heritage and how the Museums Association works on that. They showed a survey of the results of this work and things they have learned affected visitor numbers. The last discussion for on the first day was the constituent museum and the end of audience. On Friday 17th November, we started our second day in the MA conference struggling to find a seat in the workshop s room to attend the talk Exhibitions that appeal to all ages. I really found it really important to understand the different views about the primary and secondary audiences, and to hear different examples from museums experience with schools & families, adults and self-developers. After this talk, we moved to the exciting discussion titled Funders in conversation where 4 of the UK-wide funders discussed how they do funding for their foundations, and helped us to explore new ideas. I attended two sessions on volunteering. The Future of volunteering which I liked very much, especially the way they presented their analysis and A day in the life of a volunteer where they gave us lots of important information, filled with the experience they lived.
Lastly, the 21st-century curator was a very supportive talk and I loved how they opened up the discussion with the audience in the auditorium by giving us group work to do. Unfortunately, we then had to leave to get our train back to London!! To end, I would love to send my big thanks to Claire Messenger, who always give chances and throws light on all her ITP fellows, and this time it was happily my turn to get the opportunity again to be part of this amazing trip with these wonderful people. So first, thanks for giving me the chance to meet you again Claire, to meet Becca, Jessica, Rika, Joyee and Saadu, and everyone else. Thanks for the new experience you gave to me, the lovely places I have discovered and for all the information I have gained. Of course I can t finish without say thanks for all the delicious food we had on this lovely trip! And yes, MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES.