Students join in Museum Day projects

The week of activities begins on Tuesday and ends on May 19 with an Open Day featuring traditional characters, the “Heri-tage Hideaway” and a book exhibition.

The workshops and other youth oriented activities during the week-long commemoration are aimed at deepening the links between what young people learn in the classroom and informal sources of education.

“Museums and Young People” is the theme selected by the organisers, the Interna-tional Council of Museums. In keeping with the global theme, the National Museum and Art Gallery will conduct educational and fun workshops for secondary school students.

The main focus of the National Museum is the preservation of the heritage of Trinidad and Tobago. As such, this new thrust by the museum will see the young people exploring subjects and creating projects on a number of areas. These will focus on life in TT during specific periods of history, discovering traditional arts such as wire-bending, stilt walking and fabric design.

The workshop on wire-bending and the projects which come out of the experience will be dedicated to the memory of recently deceased Mas Maker Cito Velasquez who pioneered the art form in this country and further afield.

In an effort to open dialogue about the value and contribution of museums to our national development, the National Museum will host a panel discussion featuring contributions from local and regional museologists.

The National Museum is currently on a drive to encourage more young people to walk through its doors, to see it as supporting what they learn at school and to see the institution as important to their own development and knowledge base.