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Culture Ministry kicks off workshop to help revive museums
From left: Ms Jennifer Wishart, Ms Renee Homiak and Dr James Rose in conversation
With the intention of transforming local museums in the quest to attract increased patronage, the Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport in association with the Commonwealth Association of Museums yesterday commenced a two-day workshop for local museum representatives.
The workshop, which is being held at the Guyana National Museum, comes as a result of Guyana being awarded for the first time the Commonwealth Association of Museums Internship for 2010.
The selected intern, Ms Renee Homiak, of Canada arrived in Guyana on Monday last and is expected to assist local museum representatives in programming strategies that could improve the way local museums are perceived by the public.
According to Ms Jennifer Wishart of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, the move, which is fully embraced by Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony, is one that will move Guyana a step forward. “We have museums and we have beautiful collections; we have very, very meaningful stuff in our museums but how do we sell it to the public? How do we market our materials?” The training, Wishart speculated, will put local museums in a better position to better attract the public.
The workshop which will continue today has attracted participation from a total of 18 organisations among them representatives from both public and private museums as well as representatives from libraries and the national archive, Wishart said.
In the dual capacity of Chairman of Guyana’s Heritage Society and that of National Trust, Dr James Roses, disclosed yesterday that the workshop is extremely meaningful for Guyana. He attributed his comments to the fact that Guyana has not been exposed to professional training in museum work for some years.
In fact he revealed that there is no institution locally that offers such training. “I can send one of my staff overseas to be trained but that is one person the Commonwealth Association of Museums has made a member competent available to Guyana. We can train as many persons as we possibility can in the current field of museum practice and that is very important.”
According to Dr Rose there has been no effort to improve on what is done in the museum arena locally as persons have over the years been practicing old methods. He revealed that after perusing the intern’s Curriculum Vitae the Department of Culture was convinced that she had the necessary competence to take work in the local museums forward.
He noted that the training that will be provided over the next six months of Homiak’s stay would be very critical.
And even at the end of Homiak’s stint in Guyana, plans will be streamlined for the formation of a Guyana Association of Museums. This strategic plan, Wishart said, will enable the entities that would have benefited from sessions to continue to help each other.
“We will keep in contact with each other, we will visit each other and help each other where necessary…This will not be a one-off thing the training can be sustained because we will be meeting.”
In addition, Wishart said that there are other courses that representatives of museums could apply for through the Commonwealth Association of Museums, which is funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.
In helping to revive museums across the country, the Ministry of Culture had earlier this year observed international Museum Day with outreach activities in outlying Regions including Linden, Berbice, and Bartica; plans are apace to take the activity to Lethem shortly. “We want to go further and get all the people involved for them to understand the priceless things that we have in Guyana and the meaning of our history, who we are and where we came from…” Wishart added.
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