With funding from HLF, ten people began the Community Engagement Initiative in April. This
career enhancing training scheme provides placements in museums across Northern Ireland.
Placements are packed with skills development opportunities as participating museums focus on
developing innovative ways to engage new audiences.
“As an artist and creative facilitator, I saw the Community Engagement Initiative as a new challenge
– a chance to develop my skills in working with community groups and to explore a long-held
interest in history and heritage. The main focus of the project on the Johnny McKeagney archive of
drawings was hugely appealing to me, as it is such a wonderful visual record of rural life in
Fermanagh.
All of the museum staff have been open and supportive since I arrived. It’s great to be part of a
small team where the work is diverse and constantly changing. So far, I’ve been involved in a wide
range of the museum’s education and community outreach activities including a shared education
project called ‘Battles, Bricks and Bridges’, and the ‘Forget-me-not’ programme in local care homes.
My first formal assignment was to look at how families engage with the museum. In addition to
designing a range of family-oriented learning resource materials for the living history programme, I
set up a dedicated creative activity space in one of the museum buildings. For the month of July,
the ‘Shift House’ became the ‘Doodle Den’. In it, I worked with families and pre-school groups on
museum-related creative activities. Each task had a separate area within the den, including a free
drawing space called the ‘Doodling Desk’ and an area for working with clay. I added soft seating so
that parents/grandparents could relax while the children were busy. I enjoyed engaging with families
in this informal way, and it was rewarding to see the children devote so much energy and
consideration to the activities. The Doodle Den proved very popular, and the feedback I received
from children and parents alike was overwhelmingly positive. There were almost 1000 participants
during the five weeks.
In the next phase of my work, I’ll develop a learning programme based on the Johnny
McKeagney folklore archive, targeting an older audience. I have enjoyed examining his
original sketchbooks, and I see the drawings as a great resource for engaging communities in
the life and traditions of Fermanagh’s recent past. I am currently developing ideas for a range
of outreach events and creative projects, starting with a project in the Dooneen Community
Centre, near Tempo, in September. Outreach work will be key in the remaining twelve months
of my post, as the museum is about to go through a major redevelopment. It’s an exciting
phase in the life of the museum and I’ve been lucky enough to have been included in many
the discussions about the new development.
The combination of hands on training at the museum and the formal training sessions with the
other trainees has been a very positive and stimulating experience. A major highlight of the
formal training for me was the two-day session with Jocelyn Dodd from the University of
Leicester. I share her views on the need for community engagement to be at the heart of a
museum’s activity and for programmes to be exciting and impactful. I look forward to
attempting to achieve this over the next twelve months.”