A 30-year retrospect of the Greek Ministry of Culture educational programmes: an insider's insight
The presentation of Stathis Gotsis on February 25, 2014 at the
Association of Greek Archaeologists offered us an earnest account and insight
of the Greek experience and efforts to make museums more inclusive and open to
society. A history graduate himself and an employee of the Greek Ministry of
Culture and its Centre of Educational Programmes since 1991, S. Gotsis joined
the Byzantine and Christian Museum in 2000 as the head of Educational Programmes.
It is worth noticing that the B&C Museum has been a pioneer in educational
programmes nationwide for many years. However, S. Gotsis had already been
involved in educational programmes since 1985, when the very first project of
the Ministry on ‘the History of Writing’ was launched.
In his presentation he talked about four different projects: one
with a group of secondary education students between the age of 13 and 15, who
worked on a project in Gazi, an old and closed down industrial complex of natural
gas; a project with a group of mentally impaired women; another one with a
group of elderly people from a neighbourhood Centre for old people (KAPI) in
Athens; a project with twenty prison school students, nineteen of whom were immigrants;
and last but not least, a landmark project in the 90s with Roma children in one
of the most rundown areas of Athens.
The account was human, refreshing, inspiring – the immediate product
of some projects were impressive, e.g. a manuscript book - engaging and
unexpectedly hopeful, showing how the parties involved on either side worked
together learning from each other with constant feedback, in equal terms and
without an academic overtone. Stathis Gotsis admitted that it is hard to really
know how much of an impact these interactions/projects had in the lives of the
people involved, but the process mattered, for both parties.
In the Q&A session we heard however more interesting - and sad in a way – facts: that even though
by now the Ministry of Culture has thirty years of accumulated practice in
educational programmes, there is no evaluation whatsoever of the results, no
statistics published, nor a follow-up. The numbers and the results are handed
over to the Ministry, but they are never processed or (re)evaluated.
Actually,
there was a very specific question from an Ephorate (Greek archaeological
service) employee who said that all this, i.e. the presentation, was very
interesting and nice, but because of the crisis and the elimination of staff it
is impossible to conduct such programmes nowadays. Stathis Gotsis was of a
different opinion though: he believes that this attitude is not a recent one
and cannot be attributed solely to the crisis. He very openly stated that
educational programmes were never viewed as a priority. This mentality caused
the lack of systematic and consistent work in the hundreds of museums in
Greece, and that is why we saw only Ephorates who happened to have someone
interested in the subject organising such projects.
The social role of museums in Greece, in other words, is far from
being mainstream.
Smaro Touloupa
Professional Licensed Tourist Guide for Greece
Cultural Heritage Studies (MA)
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