The annual visit to the local museum is now turning interesting. It is no more an annual ritual that one undertook by hurriedly moving from one arte-fact to another. Thanks to several organisations such as Rereeti, The Heritage Lab, Eka and Museums of India who are collaborating with schools in planning activities for school students. Museum visits made more meaningful Museum visits made more meaningful
Besides curating short interactive experiences in museums, these organizations also consult for them, helping them identify their audiences and design specialized community outreach programs. These are specifically designed to encourage an interactive exchange between the museum and the people.
P Anuradha Reddy, member of the Governing Council of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) says, “We have been advocating museum visits with a purpose. The heritage clubs in schools need to think out-of-the-box and come up with ideas.” She adds, “Every city has a history, students could be divided into groups and each group could come up with a detailed study on the art, architecture, tangible and intangible history of the area. Even graveyards, especially British graveyards have stories to tell.”
“Our main target audiences as part of our audience development are families and schools. We curate experiences within museums for school students that are relevant and use the collections to add value to their existing knowledge. The focus is just not on knowledge rather it is on the development of soft skills like critical thinking, creative thinking, communication and team building. We also take travelling exhibitions to schools as we realize that school can’t always come to museums. These travelling exhibitions are not just for viewing but we encourage schools to take part in the installation and deinstallation of the exhibition giving them a different insight and skill sets that they otherwise would not have access to.” Tejshvi added.
