Reflections on My Department Activities and Colleagues (Nagwa Bakr, ITP 2019, Egypt)

Written by Nagwa Bakr, Community Exhibition Officer, Ministry of Antiquities (ITP 2019, Egypt).

My name is Nagwa Bakr from Egypt, and I am a participant on the ITP for 2019. I’m working as a Community Exhibition Officer at the Ministry of Antiquities mainly planning programmes for community engagement. Now I’m a part of international engagement with the ITP, which is great!

Meeting participants who are specialists in different fields of museums and heritage from different countries is making me exhausted all the time! Every day I’m looking to my colleagues during training as a great museum of humanity and experiences, thinking about journey of our ancestors and asking, what about the relation of our ancestors in the past?  Maybe they met, fought, or even got married! Whatever happened in the past, we are here today as heritage keepers in training to exchange experiences in keeping the heritage of humanity.

How lucky I am to meet my friend of 18-years Mohamed Mokhtar as a senior fellow of ITP 2019. It is the second trip for us together outside Egypt. From the first day of our arrival to Schafer House we planned the first outing to discover the city together. Every day we have many plans and activities after the ITP. We have walked around the streets, we visited Trafalgar Square, the London Eye, the V&A, the Natural History Museum, Hyde Park, and spent a sunny lovely day at Brighton. We also have the company our Egyptian friend doll, Titisheri, or ‘Toto’ for short. It is a handmade doll made by my friend in Egypt and has become the mascot of my visit. The doll is used in storytelling of Egyptian history for kids.

I was looking forward to meet the curators of my department in Egypt & Sudan. On the first day they invited me and my friend Yasser Abdelrady from Nubia Museum to talk further about our departmental programmes. Over the next few days we have had many lectures on the Museum’s collection data base, a great lecture about the Amara West artefacts and documents, a lecture on the department’s volunteers and on volunteer roles at the BM, and finally a session on archaeological illustration.

I am passionate to gain more knowledge and cannot wait for more experiences and fun with the ITP’s staff and colleagues.

Nagwa