Narodowe Muzeum Morskie w Gdańsku

Workshop for Seaside partners

As one of the EU project Seaside, the CMM has organised a two-day workshop for delegates from Lithuania, Germany and Sweden. The workshop was meant to show to our guests Polish innovative exhibition projects and modern forms of communicating with the public. On the first day of the event, Natalia Grzywacz-Leszkowska and Tomasz Wasiewicz of the "Eksperyment" Science Centre in Gdynia presented a new approach to the acquisition of sciences through a performance titled "Science Means Fun Here" – full of physical and chemical experiments. This idea for education in a field that both children and grown-ups find difficult to grasp has proved a major success, attracting school parties and families alike.

The second speaker was deputy head of the Warsaw Rising Museum Paweł Ukielski. He gave a vivid description of how exposition and narrative are developed through a variety of spatial, visual and audiovisual forms. He also spoke of the rules of text editing used by the museum for exhibit labels; they have to be concise and written in simple language.

On the next day, workshop participants were able to compare this undeniable success story of the recent years with the greatest museum attraction of our region, at least in terms of visitor numbers - the Malbork Castle Museum. Its curator, Marek Stokowski, presented the educational and commercial offers of the museum, regularly attracting people willing to combine a history lesson with entertainment in the chambers, yards and fortifications of the castle. After the presentation, Seaside guests were taken by the speaker on a two-hour trip back in time and shown round the castle.

An important item on the agenda of the seminar was the intervention of Agnieszka Piórkowska of the CMM educational unit, who presented to the audience the programme of the CMM Maritime Culture Centre (OKM) now under construction, to be inaugurated in late 2011.

The thirty participants of the workshop, mostly our next-door neighbours across the land or the sea, must have been impressed by the presentations when they concluded, "We had no idea we could see such wonders just round the corner".