Milton Keynes Museum have been funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund for the project: ‘A Museum for a New City’. In partnership we have been collaborating and facilitating workshops alongside seldom heard audiences.
This has included supporting the African Diaspora Festival working on a mix of heritage workshops that were curated together. The workshops were held in the Museum’s new galleries and included lots of conversations about identity, what it means to be part of Milton Keynes including both African and Milton Keynes Heritage. The workshops have been a mix of both adults and children.
The Moving Windmills Project in Malawi have been key partners and it has been great to meet with the project managers and artists from Malawi online at three of the workshops and also on the day of the festival. They carried out their own artist and heritage workshops at the same time in Malawi as we carried out our workshops in Milton Keynes.
A big thank you to Elsa – the artist, Talie – the ADF workshop lead and the rest of the ADF team including the lovely Rooda and Temi for their invite to work together.
The windmills have been put together during the workshops. African style photo frames were also made and the Hidden Stories theme has run as a curatorial theme all the way through. We also visited as a group the wonderful Bradwell Windmill and learnt all about its history and the future development plans to look after it from volunteers Richard and Avril.
The collaboration has also seen us facilitate family Yoga with Truby’s Garden Tearoom, a fun-filled Paint N Sip with Q Alliance, pop-ups at Deanshanger Pride, discussions on activism, and workshops on creativity and identity. We also explored CMK with the Museum’s Community Outreach Officer on a hidden histories walk. You can read a blog on this, written by one of our participants here.
If you are a community group and would like to learn more about working with Milton Keynes Museum or attend some of the workshops taking place over the next few months email: director@aha-mk.org or check out the website:www.miltonkeynesmuseum.org.uk