Thank you and farewell ITP 2021!

Written by George Peckham, ITP Assistant

On Sunday 10 April we said goodbye to the fellows of ITP 2021. The last four weeks have absolutely flown by and it feels like only yesterday we were welcoming the 2021 cohort for the first day at the British Museum. We were able to celebrate the end of the programme in the tradition way: with barbecue food and drinks in the garden of the Bedford Hotel. Despite being in April, the weather was nice enough that we could stay in the garden and celebrate will into the evening with this year’s fellows and British Museum staff as we looked back on the first ITP for 2 years.

It was a very early start at the hotel, where at 4am we said our first goodbye to our group of 16 fellow. Durakhshona Boboeva had an early flight to catch to go home to Tajikistan and the National Republican and Regional Study Museum Named After Rudaki.

ITP group visit to Heong Gallery Cambridge

Throughout the day as more fellows began to leave for the airport. While it was sometimes emotional to say goodbye, we hope our fellows are comforted in the knowledge that over the last six weeks they have built friendships and networks which will keep them connected well beyond the summer programme. There are already some plans for visits to each other’s countries! Uktamali Ravshanov (Bukhara State Museum Reserve, Uzbekistan) is spending a couple of days in Istanbul with Emrah Kahraman (Istanbul Archaeological Museums, Turkey) on his way home to Uzbekistan.

I think I can speak on behalf of everyone at the British Museum who has worked on ITP 2021 that it has been a pleasure to work with this group of fellows and a joy to finally welcome new international colleagues. We thank the fellows for being such willing and passionate participants on the programme. It has been fascinating to learn about your work and your home institutions and it has been such fun to explore London, the UK and its museums with you.

ITP group visit to Bodleian Library Oxford

Thank you to the team at Constantine Ltd for once again safely delivering our fellows to Heathrow and Gatwick and making sure they made it through the airports with ease.

We wish all of this year’s ITP fellows all the best for the future! We have lots more blogs to share about the 2021 Programme. Also this week, the 2021 cohort will be taking over our social media channels with some posts they created during their time at the BM.