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Eileen Musundi, Nairobi 10Th December 2018

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Eileen Musundi, Nairobi 10Th December 2018 The International Training Programme Museum Association Conference Belfast 2018 With the British Museum A report by Eileen Ondusye Musundi, ITP 2008, Senior Fellow 2013 First and foremost, I wish to thank the team at the ITP for conceptualising, managing, coordinating and disseminating a very useful ITP+ programme. The ITP is always innovative and creative, and benefits of their programmes reverberate throughout in the hearts and work of the ITP alumni around the world. Many thanks to the International Training Programme and The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust for supporting us. Claire Messenger, ITP Manager, for her invaluable wisdom and leadership Rebecca Horton and Jessica Juckes for their wonderful support Louise Smyth and Hannah Crowdy for their wonderful welcome and hospitality in Northern Ireland To my ITP colleagues; Matsosane Molibeli, Heba Khairy and Meltem Yasdag for the gift of friendship and camaraderie The British Museum and the National Museums of Kenya Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and Ulster Museum The Museums Association The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, for making all this possible Eileen, Matsosane, Heba and Meltem in the Photographer’s Studio, Ulster Folk Park Preambles When I applied for the ITP+ course, Museums Association Conference, I expected to find out how colleagues deal with emerging global issues in their museums, and share how we do so with ours. I wished to be at par with issues affecting museums worldwide today. I also wanted to see how Belfast had emerged from The Troubles and emerged as a leading cultural tourism destination. And of course, I wanted to meet and interact with fellow ITP colleagues from various countries! I looked forward to learning about the creativity, innovation, history, culture and people of Northern Ireland from the National Museums Northern Ireland sites and experience how they displayed their collections and curated their stories. I am happy to report that all my expectations were met and even surpassed. Saturday 3rd November, Arrivals I arrived at the same time with Matsosane at Heathrow early Saturday morning. Due to the excellent pre-course information the ITP had circulated to us all, we were able to recognise each other right away and were soon chatting as we waited on our lay over. Heba joined us a couple of hours later and it was like we had all met before, such is the camaraderie of the ITP! We travelled to Belfast and enjoyed our free afternoon together, exploring and sampling the sights and sounds of this lovely city. Sunday 4th November, Orientation and Ulster Museum This was a lovely sunny day. We met with Claire Messenger, Manager of the International Training Programme, Jessica Juckes, Assistant of the ITP and Meltem Yasdag from Turkey. On our walk to the Ulster Museum, Claire pointed out the landmarks of Belfast and we also had time to acquaint ourselves with each other. At the Ulster Museum, Louise Smyth, Training and Development Advisor, National Museums Northern Ireland, welcomed us and gave us a brief on the museum, after which we were free to explore on our own. The Ulster Museum reminded me a lot about my own museum, the Nairobi National Museum due to the diverse range of galleries: the Art Galleries, Nature, History and Culture. The art galleries impressed me with their diverse and carefully laid out collections, and I spent a lot of time reading the texts and taking pictures for further research. I liked the idea of having a children’s corner with tables and art materials for them to have a go at creating their own artworks. Eileen at the Art Gallery Dippy’s exhibit The temporary exhibition on the Diplodocus, Dippy, was receiving a lot of attention from visitors, and it was easy to see why because it was so impressive. I took note of the nature of the storyline, which took the form of a conversation between Dippy and a young Northern Irish friend, and that it was localised to the Northern Irish situation. There were also lots of children’s tables, with children making sketches of the Dinosaur. Noted, too, was the mounting styles and display of the dinosaur (which is a cast of the original), as we handle similar jobs in our work on exhibitions. In the Nature Galleries, I recognised stone tools and the fossil coelacanth as well as noting similarities in display techniques and enjoyed reading about the origins of Ireland. What I have come to discover is that designers think alike the world over, and we may be working independently of each other in our different corners of the world, but we approach and solve our problems in a similar manner. It also gives me confidence that no ideas are redundant and all are worth a try. The costumes gallery was also intriguing, for the garments on display and the story that had been linked to the 100th anniversary of Universal Suffrage. Monday 5th November, Northern Ireland’s recent history We had an early morning group discussion on Northern Ireland’s recent troubled history which set the pace for the day’s programme. We drew parallels in our own political histories, and I talked about how East Africa today is moving towards regional integration, with evidence in our new generation passport encompassing Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya. We visited the Ulster Museum and specifically the Troubles Gallery. On Mondays the museum is closed to the public to enable scheduled maintenance work to be carried out, so we felt very privileged to have the gallery to ourselves. We considered the challenges a curator faces when representing a recent troubled history. I thought the exhibition succeeded in being impartial, not leaning to any one side when presenting the stories. Most of the objects were graphical in black and white, and this conveyed a sense of going back in time, and looking through the lens of a camera, as it were. It also made the stories very real, especially to someone who was not there when it happened. The historical timeline, placing the happenings in Northern Ireland alongside other major world events brought the events closer to home. “As recently as 9/11”! I could have missed the all-important quote: “while we all have a shared past, we do not have a shared Memory”, if my course book had not prompted me! It is there in the introductory text, and is such a powerful statement. I left the gallery feeling more than ever the relevance of museums in society. In many places, museums are the ONLY place such recent troubled pasts and contested histories can be represented. It is the duty of museums to tell these stories. In the early afternoon, we took a taxi tour to The Wall itself that divides Belfast since the time of the Troubles. The taxi driver was very knowledgeable and gave his story in a flowing, interesting manner. He was also quite impartial, we could not tell from which side he originated. We had a chance to also add our peace message onto the wall! It felt strange, doing graffiti legally! We felt that the taxi tour complemented the gallery’s stories and it is imperative to experience both. From our discussion with Karen Logan, the curator of the Troubles Gallery in the afternoon, we learnt more about the behind the scenes of setting up the gallery. The stories and objects had to be collected ethically, sensitively, they had to be verified, the language and terminologies had to be sensitive, and all manner of expectations managed. We also discussed our own troubled histories and I drew parallels with our 2007 post-election violence. Noteworthy too is that the exhibition is starkly black and white, not only because that makes it easier to read and straight to the point, but it was also easier, cheaper to produce and it can be easily changed from time to time. Tuesday 6th November, Ulster Folk Park and Transport Museum I like folk parks and ethnographic museums, ever since visiting St Fagan’s during my time on the ITP in 2008. This type of ‘living museum’ presents history in such a lively, interactive way, and provides avenues for lots of intergenerational experiences and fun for the whole family. The Ulster Folk Museum, located in a serene, lush green countryside, was established following an Act of Parliament in 1958 and it aims to preserve the rural way of life and traditions, living memories, stories, dance and music of Northern Ireland. At the start of our visit, we were given a real, friendly Northern Irish welcome by the museum staff and given an introduction in the visitor centre, over tea, cakes and fifteens. We then experienced the living museum. Buildings from as early as the 1920s are dismantled, translocated and rebuilt brick by brick on location in the museum grounds. Care has been taken to lay out whole streets, retaining the original widths of roads and streets. The full context of the original look of the houses is retained, so cottages are set out in their small gardens, and some even have growing vegetables and are maintained by the local horticultural society. Sophia, an intern from Germany, was our guide for the morning. She was appropriately dressed in costume for the day, in long skirts and an apron. We started off in Tea Lane, so named because the locals used to sell a cuppa to passing workers on their way to the factories. We knocked on the door of the dressmaker’s house and out she came, speaking totally in character like a housewife busy with her daily chores but quite willing to welcome us into her house for a chat.
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