I am now in Bulgaria as part of the team kicking off the process to create the first Children's Museum in Bulgaria --- in Sofia the Capital. When I last visited Bulgaria in late 2010, pilot interactive exhibition galleries were just starting to open around the country. These "Children's Corners" have since been enormously successful and popular with children, parents, and teachers.
Now the dream of creating a full-fledged Children's Museum in Sofia is marching down the road to reality. While much has been accomplished by our Bulgarian Museum colleagues, it is interesting how the lessons learned from the pilot Children's Corners are still informing the burgeoning Children's Museum project. While I'll be reflecting on my current Bulgarian trip in future posts, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit my (slightly modified) posting from my 2010 trip below:
A Bulgarian (Museum) Revolution
What would you do if you lived in a country that had no Children's Museums?
That's currently the state of affairs in Bulgaria. Fortunately for the
Bulgarian Museum community, and Bulgarian museum visitors in particular,
a determined and resourceful young woman named
Vessela Gertcheva ably assisted by
Nadia Zaharieva of the
America for Bulgaria Foundation are working to change all that. In fact, Vessela, Nadia, and their colleagues in
the museum and cultural sectors are on the brink of a true Bulgarian
Museum
Revolution.
I just returned from a trip to Bulgaria to observe and provide advice on the pilot project designed to develop
five "Children's Corners" (really better thought of as small interactive exhibition areas
designed to introduce children and family groups to hands-on exhibits)
into five different museums around Bulgaria. (
Note: remember that this post refers to my
first trip to Bulgaria in 2010.)
Vessela is spearheading the "Children's Corners" project as a way to
build public awareness for the possibilities of interactive learning
spaces in Bulgaria, and to ultimately pave the way for a free-standing
Bulgarian Children's Museum there. In this blog posting, I'll share
some of the experiences of my trip to Bulgaria, as well as some of the
museum and exhibit ideas I came away with.
But first, a little background. Everyone I told about my trip before I
actually left for Bulgaria was surprised and/or fascinated by my
destination. But most people (including myself, originally) weren't
really sure where Bulgaria was located. So, here's a map:
Bulgaria is bordered to the south by Greece and Turkey, to the west by
Macedonia, to the north by Romania, and to the east by the Black Sea.
My sense of central Sofia, the capital, was that there were a few
beautiful buildings surrounded by much blocky, oppressive architecture
reflective of the Soviet-dominated, totalitarian past of Bulgaria. This
is changing since Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, but slowly.
Similarly, the Bulgarian museums we visited were decidedly "old
school." Large buildings whose interiors were dominated by rows and
floors of artifacts and objects in glass cases (or as our Bulgarian
hosts charmingly described them, "cages.") While many of these
traditional Bulgarian museums provided interesting staffed programs
(such as weekend bazaars or the popular annual
"European Bat Night" at
the National Museum of Natural History) museum staff have become
increasingly interested in exploring ways for integrating interactive
exhibit areas geared toward children and families into their museums.
The first of the five Children's Corners opened in September 2010 at the
Regional Museum of History in Blagoevgrad, in the southwestern part of
Bulgaria. Having seen the finished gallery, I am very impressed and
think that the Blagoevgrad exhibition raises the bar high for the
succeeding four galleries in this project to match. (You can read my
entire review and see a batch of pictures from the Blagoevgrad installation by clicking over to the
ExhibiFiles website.)
I also learned a new exhibit trick from our Bulgarian museum colleagues: their animal track stamping component makes use of
"Moon Sand"
in the central stamping area, which makes for sharper track impressions
as well as limiting some degree of the messiness associated with
traditional loose sand.
In visiting the other museum sites that will be creating their own
Children's Corners, and by meeting with their directors and curatorial
staff, I was struck by several things:
• It is exceedingly difficult to imagine the possibilities or develop
interactive exhibit ideas if neither you, nor your visitors, have
directly experienced a hands-on gallery or museum. This is a key part
of both the challenge, and the revolution, inherent in the Children's
Corner project. Fortunately, the completed gallery in Blagoevgrad is
already serving as a model and benchmark to Bulgarian museum
professionals and visitors alike.
• Prototyping and testing your ideas is the most effective way to
achieve good results. There was a little bit of the tendency in
Bulgaria (as there is in the U.S. and elsewhere in the museum world) to
want to design and develop the interactive children's exhibitions inside
meeting rooms with a quorum of experts. Fortunately, by the end of our
trip to Bulgaria, our hosts seemed to be warming up to the notion of
using prototyping as a way to answer exhibit design and development
questions.
• Failure
IS an option. As I often say to my kids, "It's
o.k. to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and don't keep
repeating the same mistakes over and over." There is an enormous
degree of professional pride and pressure at stake for the Bulgarian
Children's Corner project sites --- which might make some people decide
to stick with very safe exhibit design and development choices.
Fortunately, the vast majority of project partners we came in contact
with seem to realize that this is a time and opportunity that favors
choices that may be difficult and risky.
We really are witnessing the start of a truly exciting museum revolution
in Bulgaria, and I can't wait to see what happens next! (Feel free to
contact me with questions or to request addition details about my work in Bulgaria.)
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