Facilitating the exploration of India & the World: A History in Nine Stories: A Toolkit for Educators
This summer a very exciting exhibition is on view at the National Museum.
India and the World is a landmark exhibition created in partnership by the British Museum, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Mumbai and the National Museum in Delhi. It showcases some of the most important objects and works of art from India in dialogue with iconic objects on loan from the British Museum’s world collection.
Marking 70 years of Indian Independence, the exhibition brings together 210 objects not only from the collections of these three Museums but from museums and private collections across India. The Indian objects within each section are positioned within a global context and serve to explore connections and comparisons between India and the rest of the world, covering a period of over a million years ago to the present day.
Flow was brought on board by the National Museum to develop a dedicated toolkit for educators that will allow them to orient their learners to the exhibition, facilitate their visit at the Museum and also plenarise their learning back in school. The toolkit builds a seamless exploration of the exhibition while drawing focus on specific themes and ideas that are being explored in the Indian middle school curriculum. It uses select narratives from within the exhibition to juxtapose our understanding of the past within the circumstances of the present.
With the opening of the exhibition in May 2018, the toolkit has been made available as a free downloadable resource from the museum’s website.
http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/pdfs/FlowIndia-NM-India&TheWorld-EducatorToolkit-Web.pdf
Accompanying the resource was an orientation workshop for middle school educators that familiarized them with the structure of the toolkit and demonstrated key strategies of effective facilitation with full class groups. Flow conducted the session in collaboration with Dr. JD Hill of the British Museum who is has been one of the key curators of the exhibition. A group of 30 educators from a range of private, public and NGO schools of Delhi NCR participated in the session.
The session brought to the forefront a range of ideas and deliberations around the idea of historical enquiry and how it can be effectively facilitated in the school context.
Participant Priya Garg from Modern School, Vasant Vihar shared her most valuable takeaway as ‘how observation in a directed fashion leads to the use unraveling of the past for curious young minds.’
The exhibition is on view until the end of June 2018 and is a must-visit for all.
