Today - 16th March, I volunteered at Manchester Museum to take part in a study whereby the higher education academy (HEA) used me to find out how higher education courses can use museum spaces and their collections to aid interdisciplinary learning about and for sustainability.
For this I visisted different parts of the museum, examined a particular collection, reflected on and discussed sustainability issues with my peers. We each recorded our thoughts on a spider diagram and then discussed further. Over the 5 hours we had explored our thoughts and discussed more and so then kept going back to our spider diagram and adding further thoughts on the topic down in a different colour therefore showing how our thoughts had developed as the session had gone on and jotting down a key to show which colour came first etc. This was very interesting as everyone in the group had a different idea of what it was and I suppose a lot of it came down to what course they were studying. Purposefully HEA had asked for volunteers that studied art, materials science and social anthropology and so combining people that have been taught to or simply naturally think in an "abstract/Creative" way helped us gather a broader range of ideas and perspectives. The outcome was brilliant because not only were the outcomes great, we also learned a lot from each other. We then got to discuss with a member of staff from the museum questions that had been raised; one being, how can all of the correct information be gathered about an artifact especially when being faced with the issue of a language barrier and/or once translating what has been said, the discriptive words they used could be completely different to what british people use. Another issue would be that word of mouth through hundreds of years may have changed the purpose and meaning of a certain object. He agreed that this is an issue in some cases especially when a lot of the items were stolen through war times as trophy's/souveneers or to sell, which most often was the case with brass and ivory objects and then over time they've have been passed on through the family and then donated to museums. This way it is very difficult to retrieve information and usually archaeologists and historians come into place to estimate a story.
From this I learnt information about how museum spaces and their collections can aid interdisciplinary learning about and for sustainability and I developed a familiarity with the Manchester Museum and it's collections. I also expanded my understanding of sustainability and experienced a new way of working involving critical enquiry, listening and presenting ideas. It was a really great opportunity for me. I will soon be sent a report including what they have taken from the group of volunteers today as well as from two other museums, it seems like we were a great help to them.
The personal meaning mapping tool that we used was developed by John Falk and his colleagues, to measure learning in 'free-choice' learning settings such as museums. It is designed to measure how 'a specified educational experience uniquely affects each individual's conceptual, attitudinal and emotional understanding'. They used it today to record how our thoughts and ideas relating to 'sustainability' change throughout the day.
BRUNDTLAND (1987) Definition of Sustainable Development
Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The definition has been criticised as too vague and more recently UNESCO have proposed three interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars for sustainabile development - economic development, social development and environmental protection. This formulation suggests the inclusion of social justice, health and poverty issues under the umbrella of sustainable development.
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