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MUSEUMS ARE LOST WORLDS WITH A VAST Serhii RESOURCE BASE FOR FASCINATING LEARNING Diachenko How did you come up with the idea of your project Public Education Through Public Environment: Accessible to All? Museums are vital cultural centers that allow us to work with the population in an effective manner not only through increasing their educational level but also developing tourism industry, local business, promoting local projects. We realized that during a large international project for development of museums in Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine in 2013-2014. It took place in our region and was aimed at local museums and district centers. But it was clear that without the support of the local communities we will be too distant from the people. That is why the goal of the Public Education Through the Public Environment: Accessible to All Project was establishing an educational center in Kherson for the revitalization of district museums in Southern Ukraine using available venues to create activity centers for the popularization of cultural heritage and potential.
How can one create a platform for education and implementation of community initiatives with the real opportunities for modern enlightenment and development of brands for the local community is explained by Urban COYC Initiative Group Project Manager Serhii Diachenko.
We discover ideas directly in the museum and cultural environment. And the fact that our region remained on the periphery of the cultural development processes in the country for many years prompted us to search for answers among people: what have we missed, what have we lost and what haven't we talked about yet? Every family has its history and these culture stories should be told. What educational services can you offer to adults? We strive to develop a series of lectures based on the collections of cultural heritage contained in the museums. We showed museum employees the real growth possibilities in educational direction, and we want to help cultural establishments to get nearer to the local history in order to animate it in the museum practice. We also consider ways to involve in the education history the teachers and providers of various tourism services. And how do local communities react to your innovations? The local city and district authorities of Henichesk and Novovorontsovsk where we already worked welcomed our initiative and gave us an active support. They discovered that museums exist and that those museums contain something to be proud of and something to show in public space. For example, there is a unique Sarmatian stela in the Henichesk museum. In order to popularize it as a special and perhaps even a brand element we developed an interactive tour for the visitors. Thanks to this stela we have an opportunity to tell people more about the Sarmatians. We discover ideas directly in the museum and cultural environment. And the fact that our region remained on the periphery of the cultural development processes in the country for many years prompted us to search for answers among people: what have we missed, what have we lost and what haven't we talked about yet? Every family has its history and these culture stories should be told. I am not talking about unique items that we exhibit in the museums; they help to form a brand of the local community, which is a very important unification factor. For example there is a place in Novovorontsovsk where once stood a church and local folk treat it quite reverently, even though they don’t know how to express it. Not far from it grows an old mulberry tree which, as the rumour has it, was planted by Prince Vorontsov himself. The tree is very old indeed. Together with the local activists we decided to create a kind of public environment around the tree: set benches in a circle and paint graffiti about the prince and mulberry tree on the concrete fences. In fact there is another peculiar display item in the local museum – a sign from the Vorontsov times with a request to treat nature and the park with care not to break trees or benches. We made copies of it and plan to place them in crowded places in spring. I will give you one more example. We resumed a theatrical performance Life on Sale. We learned about it after we saw the title of the century-old theater poster in the museum exposition. This poster we continued to use to invite people of Henichesk to the play. It was almost a full house, in spite of the bad weather. Each of our project’s open lectures is a cultural initiative. It is a gradual way to develop a productive dialog between the cultural community and the civic society.
Recorded by Tetiana Pavlichenko
