Reflections on Our First Two Days in Manchester (Vishi Upadhyay, ITP 2019, India)
Written by Vishi Upadhyay, Curatorial Associate, Bihar Museum (ITP 2019, India)
Me and my three other colleagues, Nagwa (Egypt), Benedicta (Ghana) and Ketevan (Georgia) are in Manchester for our UK partner museums. We arrived at Manchester on 29th July and were welcomed by Ronan Brindley (Head of Education at the Manchester Art Gallery). On our very first day, we were introduced to the staff members of the museum and shared our aims and reasons for choosing this museum for our placements. After this friendly conversation we visited the gallery under the guidance of Ronan. We concluded our first day by having dinner with Ronan and other museum staff members.
Our second day was very exciting. Ronan introduced us to Clare Gannaway (Curator of Contemporary Art) and Meg Parnell (Learning Manager volunteer). We had a fruitful discussion with them on many points. After that we had the tours of the Halima Cassell exhibition with Janet Boston (Curator of Craft and Design). Janet and Kate Jasson (Curator Contemporary Art) took us on a tour of the museum’s store. The day continued with a session on press and marketing with the Martin Grimes (Web Manager) and Catriona Morgan (Head of Operations). Katy McCall (Family and Learning Manager) led a very good session on managing family programmes. This session was quite interesting. At the end of the day we met to Bev Hogg, she us on took a tour of the archive. The day was completed successfully with a lot of useful information.
Vishi